Contents
1. Defining Psychological War, 3
2. World War and Early Modern Communication Research, 75
3. "The Social Scientists Make a Huge Contribution," 31
4. Academic Advocates, 42
5. Outposts of the Government, 52
6. "Barrack and Trench Mates," 63
7. Internationalization and Enforcement of the Paradigm
of Domination, 94
8. The Legacy of Psychological Warfare, 707
Appendix: Dr. Stuart Dodd's List of
"Revere-Connected Papers" (1958), 118
Bibliographic Essay, 123
Notes, 133
Index, 795
1
Defining Psychological War
Communication research is a small but intriguing field in the social
sciences. This relatively new specialty crystallized into a distinct dis-
cipline within sociology — complete with colleges, curricula, the au-
thority to grant doctorates, and so forth — between about 1950 and 1955.
Today it underlies most college- and graduate-level training for print
and broadcast journalists, public relations and advertising personnel,
and the related craftspeople who might be called the "ideological work-
ers" of contemporary U.S. society. 1
Government psychological warfare programs helped shape mass com-
munication research into a distinct scholarly field, strongly influencing
the choice of leaders and determining which of the competing scientific
paradigms of communication would be funded, elaborated, and en-
couraged to prosper. The state usually did not directly determine what
scientists could or could not say, but it did significantly influence the
selection of who would do the "authoritative" talking in the field.
This book takes up three tasks. First, it outlines the history of U.S.
psychological warfare between 1945 and 1960, discussing the basic
theories, activities, and administrative structure of this type of com-
munication enterprise. Second, it looks at the contributions made by
prominent mass communication researchers and institutions to that en-
terprise. Third, it examines the impact of psychological warfare pro-
grams on widely held preconceptions about communication and science
within the field of communication research itself.
Since World War II, the U.S. government's national security cam-
paigns have usually overlapped with the commercial ambitions of major
4
SCIENCE OF COERCION
advertisers and media companies, and with the aspirations of an enter-
prising stratum of university administrators and professors. Military,
intelligence, and propaganda agencies such as the Department of De-
fense and the Central Intelligence Agency helped bankroll substantially
all of the post-World War II generation's research into techniques of
persuasion, opinion measurement, interrogation, political and military
mobilization, propagation of ideology, and related questions. The per-
suasion studies, in particular, provided much of the scientific under-
pinning for modern advertising and motivational techniques. This
government-financed communication research went well beyond what
would have been possible with private sector money alone and often
exploited military recruits, who comprised a unique pool of test sub-
jects. 2
At least six of the most important U.S. centers of postwar commu-
nication studies grew up as de facto adjuncts of government psycho-
logical warfare programs. For years, government money — frequently
with no public acknowledgment — made up more than 75 percent of the
annual budgets of Paul Lazarsfeld's Bureau of Applied Social Research
(BASR) at Columbia University, Hadley Cantril's Institute for Inter-
national Social Research (IISR) at Princeton, Ithiel de Sola Pool's Center
for International Studies (CENIS) program at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, and similar institutions. 3 The U.S. State Department
secretly (and apparently illegally) financed studies by the National Opin-
ion Research Center (NORC) of U.S. popular opinion as part of the
department's cold war lobbying campaigns on Capitol Hill, thus making
NORC's ostensibly private, independent surveys financially viable for
the first time. 4 In another case the CIA clandestinely underwrote the
Bureau of Social Science Research (BSSR) studies of torture — there is
no other word for it — of prisoners of war, reasoning that interrogation
of captives could be understood as simply another application of the
social-psychological principles articulated in communication studies. 5
Taken as a whole, it is unlikely that communication research could have
emerged in anything like its present form without regular transfusions
of money for the leading lights in the field from U.S. military, intel-
ligence, and propaganda agencies.
This book is, in part, a study of the sociology of knowledge. It looks
at the relationship between the production of "knowledge" — in this
case preconceptions about communication and coercion — and the social
and political conditions of a particular era. In this instance, leading
Defining Psychological War
5
scholars identified the cramped, often brutal attributes of mass com-
munication characteristic of one stage of advanced industrial societies,
then substituted that conception of communication for communication
as such through a process detailed in the pages that follow. Put slightly
differently, the idea of communication became something like a Ror-
schach test through which favored academics spoke about the world as
they believed it to be, and thereby helped institutionalize that vision at
the expense of its rivals.
I focus on the role of U.S. government psychological warfare pro-
grams in that process, partly because the story of their impact on this
aspect of academe has been largely forgotten or suppressed. But this
book is not intended to be a complete history of mass communication
research or of the forces that have shaped it; it is simply an opportunity
to look at the field in a new way. At least two other important formative
forces, in addition to psychological warfare projects, have been highly
influential in the evolution of modern communication research. These
are strictly academic or scholarly developments, on the one hand, and
commercial studies for private companies, on the other. University
scholars have written extensively about the academic history of the field
and will undoubtedly continue to do so. 6 Most authors, however, have
sidestepped any substantive discussion of the role of commercial re-
search in the intellectual evolution of communication research, this
despite comments from both Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton as-
serting that commercial projects were crucial to the development of the
field. 7
Tracing the links between federal research sponsorship and the evo-
lution of academic preconceptions about communication and mass me-
dia presents particularly knotty questions. The evidence shows that
psychological warfare projects became a major, and at times the central,
focus of U.S. mass communication studies between 1945 and at least
1960. But to what extent did the intense attention to this topic shape
the broader structure of assumptions and "received knowledge" of the
field?
Research funding cannot by itself create a sustainable academic
Zeitgeist, of course. 8 Sponsorship can, however, underwrite the artic-
ulation, elaboration, and development of a favored set or preconcep-
tions, and in that way improve its competitive position in ongoing
rivalries with alternative constructions of academic reality.
U.S. military, propaganda, and intelligence agencies favored an ap-
6
SCIENCE OF COERCION
proach to the study of mass communication that offered both an expla-
nation of what communication "is" (at least insofar as those agencies'
missions were concerned) and a box of tools for examining it. Put most
simply, they saw mass communication as an instrument for persuading
or dominating targeted groups. They understood "communication" as
little more than a form of transmission into which virtually any type of
message could be plugged (once one had mastered the appropriate tech-
niques) to achieve ideological, political, or military goals. Academic
contractors convinced their clients that scientific dissection and mea-
surement of the constituent elements of mass communication would
lead to the development of powerful new tools for social management,
in somewhat the same way earlier science had paved the way for pen-
icillin, electric lights, and the atom bomb. Federal patrons meanwhile
believed that analysis of audiences and communication effects could
improve ongoing propaganda and intelligence programs. 9
Entrepreneurial academics modeled the scientific tools needed for
development of practical applications of communication-as-domination
on those that had seemed so successful in the physical sciences: a
positivist reduction of complex phenomena to discrete components; an
emphasis on quantitative description of change; and a claimed per-
spective of "objectivity" toward scientific "truth." With few excep-
tions, they assumed that mass communication was "appropriately
viewed from [the perspective of] the top or power center," as Steven
Chaffee and John Hochheimer put it, ' 'rather than from the bottom or
periphery of the system." 10
Effective persuasion and propaganda were (and are) widely viewed
as a relatively rational alternative to the extraordinary brutality and
expense of conventional war. Persuasive mass communication can im-
prove military operations without increasing casualties, its advocates
contend, especially when encouraging a cornered enemy to surrender
rather than fight to the death. Similarly, by supporting the morale and
improving the command and control of their own forces, those who can
exploit these techniques reap clear military advantages. More funda-
mentally, U.S. security agencies see propaganda and psychological
warfare as a means to extend the influence of the U.S. government far
beyond the territories that can be directly controlled by U.S. soldiers,
and at a relatively modest cost. The CIA's radio broadcasting into
Eastern Europe, for example, became "one of the cheapest, safest,
Defining Psychological War
7
most effective tools of [U.S] foreign policy," as Jeane Kirkpatrick —
long a vocal proponent of U.S. psychological operations — argued."
Psychological warfare's role in the evolution of communication re-
search must be examined in the context of political developments of
the 1940s and 1950s. In truth, the primary object of U.S. psychological
operations during this period was to frustrate the ambitions of radical
movements in resource-rich developing countries seeking solutions to
the problems of poverty, dependency, and entrenched corruption. The
events in Iran, Egypt, Korea, the Philippines, Guatemala, Vietnam,
and other countries discussed in upcoming chapters bear this out.
But that was not at all how things seemed at the time to many U.S.
social scientists. To them the "real" enemy seemed to be Josef Stalin,
not Iranian nationalists or Philippine Huk guerrillas. Stalin ruled the
Soviet Union with extraordinary brutality up to his death in 1953, and
many in the West regarded the terror of the Stalin years to be the defining
feature of every communist society. The United States and the Soviet
Union clashed repeatedly over geopolitical hot spots around the world,
and the Soviets conducted a large and reasonably sophisticated psy-
chological warfare campaign against the United States. Many observers
in the West reasoned that the Marxist-Leninist doctrinal commitment
to world revolution and the fact that communists were active in various
labor and anticolonial movements proved that Moscow controlled a well-
oiled, worldwide revolutionary conspiracy. The Soviet detonation of an
atomic bomb in 1949, Mao Zedong's victory in China, and the outbreak
of war in Korea were seen by many as warnings that the Soviet Union
was bent on literally "taking over the world."
The Soviet view of the international competition, in contrast, was
that the United States was an expansionist empire. The United States
had already absorbed much of western Europe and the former European
colonies into a postwar international economic order built around the
dollar. The United States had isolated the Soviet Union internationally,
severely restricted trade, and embarked on a clandestine campaign to
overthrow the governments of the Soviet Union and several of its sat-
ellite states. It had openly intervened in Korea and secretly sponsored
coups in a growing list of developing countries. The United States had
twice used atomic bombs on civilian populations, the Soviets pointed
out, and had on several occasions threatened nuclear attacks on the
USSR, China, Korea, and Vietnam.
8
SCIENCE OF COERCION
Given this situation, many leading U.S. social scientists regarded
U.S. psychological warfare programs as an enlightened and relatively
peaceful means of managing international conflicts through measures
short of all-out war. As Ithiel de Sola Pool argued, social scientists'
active participation in U.S. foreign policy initiatives was necessary
because the "mandarins of the future" — Pool's term of praise for the
decision-making elite — need a "way of perceiving the consequences of
what they do if [their] actions are not to be brutal, stupid and bureaucratic
but rather intelligent and humane. The only hope for humane govern-
ment in the future," he continued, "is through extensive use of the
social sciences by the government." 12
In reality, though, U.S. and Soviet psychological warfare programs
each fed its rival's appetite for escalated conflicts, particularly in con-
tested countries in the Third World. Scientific research programs on
either side that claimed to be a defensive reaction to foreign intrigues
were easily interpreted in the rival's camp as aggressive preparations
for war.
At heart modern psychological warfare has been a tool for managing
empire, not for settling conflicts in any fundamental sense. It has op-
erated largely as a means to ensure that indigenous democratic initia-
tives in the Third World and Europe did not go "too far" from the
standpoint of U.S. security agencies. Its primary utility has been its
ability to suppress or distort unauthorized communication among sub-
ject peoples, including domestic U.S. dissenters who challenged the
wisdom or morality of imperial policies. In practice modern psycho-
logical warfare and propaganda have only rarely offered "alternatives"
to violence over the medium-to-long term. Instead, they have been an
integral part of a strategy and culture whose premise is the rule of the
strong at the expense of the weak, where coercion and manipulation
pose as "communication" and close off opportunities for other, more
genuine, forms of understanding. The problem with psychological war-
fare is not so much the content of individual messages: It is instead its
consistent role as an instrument for maintaining grossly abusive social
structures, notably in global North/South relations.
In the end, U.S. military and intelligence agencies became instrumental
in the systematic elaboration of an interlocking series of concepts about
communication that have defined much of post-World War II com-
munication research. True, some academic and commercial roots of
Defining Psychological War
9
U.S. communication studies can be traced back as far as the eighteenth
century. Even so, cold war-era psychological warfare studies provided
extensive, selective funding for large-scale projects designed to elab-
orate, test, and publicize the possibilities of communication-as-
domination. They helped create networks of sympathetic insiders who
enjoyed control over many aspects of scholarly publishing, rank and
tenure decisions, and similar levers of power within academe. In doing
so, these programs contributed significantly to the triumph of what is
today regarded as mainstream communication research over its rivals
in U.S. universities.
Federal agencies such as the Department of Defense, U.S. Infor-
mation Agency, and Central Intelligence Agency and their forerunners
provided the substantial majority of funds for all large-scale commu-
nication research projects by U.S. scholars between 1945 and I960. 13
Despite the heavy secrecy that still surrounds some aspects of U.S.
psychological warfare, it is clear that the federal government spent as
much as $1 billion annually on these activities during the early 1950s. 14
As is discussed in later chapters, the government allocated between $7
million and $13 million annually for university and think-tank studies
of communication-related social psychology, communication effect
studies, anthropological studies of foreign communication systems,
overseas audience and foreign public opinion surveys, and similar proj-
ects that contributed directly and indirectly to the emergence of mass
communication research as a distinct discipline. 15 The major foundations
such as the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford Foundation, which were
the principal secondary source of large-scale communication research
funding of the day, usually operated in close coordination with gov-
ernment propaganda and intelligence programs in allocation of money
for mass communication research. 16
Psychological warfare projects demanded scientific accuracy and ac-
ademic integrity, to be sure, but they were at their heart applied research
tailored to achieve narrowly defined political or military goals. Gov-
ernment agencies sought scientific data on the means to manipulate
targeted populations at home and abroad, and they were willing to pay
well for it at a time when there was very little other funding available
for large-scale communication studies.
Further, some powerful factions of the government, notably the FBI
and other domestic security agencies, aggressively repressed rival sci-
entific concepts concerning communication, particularly those trends of
10
SCIENCE OF COERCION
critical thought they regarded as subversive. Because of the bitterness
of the cold war, the influence of McCarthyism, and the strength of
clandestinely funded ideological campaigns then under way among U.S.
scholars (each of which is discussed in more detail in later chapters),
unorthodox analysis of the relationships between communication and
ideology could lead to professional ostracism, hostile FBI investiga-
tions, attacks in the press, and even violence. 17 Sociological research
that could be interpreted as critical of U.S. institutions usually entailed
serious professional risks during the 1940s and 1950s, and it sometimes
carries similar risks today.
In time psychological warfare projects become essential to the sur-
vival of important centers of what are today regarded as mainstream
mass communication studies in the United States. They were central to
the professional careers of many of the men usually presented as the
"founding fathers" of the field; in fact, the process of selecting and
anointing founding fathers has often consisted of attributing enduring
scientific value to projects that were initiated as applied studies in psy-
chological warfare. Thus Daniel Lerner's Passing of Traditional Soci-
ety — today widely recognized as the foundation of the development
theory school of communication studies — is usually remembered as a
politically neutral scientific enterprise. In reality, Lerner's work was
conceived and carried out for the specific purpose of advancing U.S.
propaganda programs in the Middle East. 18
U.S. psychological warfare programs between 1945 and 1960 pro-
vide a case study of how the priorities and values of powerful social
groups can be transformed into the "received knowledge" of the sci-
entific community and, to a certain extent, of society as a whole. It is
a twofold story, first of the successes and failures of the government's
effort to achieve the engineering of consent of targeted populations at
home and abroad, and, contained within that, the story of the mecha-
nisms by which consent was achieved among the scientists who had
been hired to help with the job. Intriguingly, the latter effort was ap-
parently more successful than the former, at least for a time. Study of
psychological warfare is in part a look at how powerful elites manage
change, reconstitute themselves in new forms, and struggle — not al-
ways successfully — to shape the consciousness of audiences that they
claim as their own.
Defining Psychological War
11
What, then, is "psychological warfare"? According to William Daugh-
erty, the term first appeared in English in a 1941 text on the Nazis' use
of propaganda, fifth column activities, and terror in the early stages of
the European war. 19 U.S. military and intelligence organizations
stretched the definition during World War II to cover a broader range
of applications of psychology and social psychology to wartime prob-
lems, including battlefront propaganda, ideological training of friendly
forces, and ensuring morale and discipline on the home front. 20
Since World War II, U.S. military and NATO manuals have typically
defined "psychological warfare" or "psychological operations" as tac-
tics as varied as propaganda, covert operations, guerrilla warfare, and,
more recently, public diplomacy. 21 Communist theoreticians have often
referred to somewhat similar activities as "agitation and propaganda"
and regarded them as a component of the related, yet broader concepts
known as class struggle and peoples' war. 22 British and Nazi German
strategies and tactics in the field have historically been termed "political
warfare" 23 and Weltanschauungskrieg ("worldview warfare"), 24 re-
spectively. Each of these conceptualizations of psychological warfare
explicitly links mass communication with selective application of vio-
lence (murder, sabotage, assassination, insurrection, counterinsurrec-
tion, etc.) as a means of achieving ideological, political, or military
goals. These overlapping conceptual systems often contributed to one
another's development, while retaining characteristics of the political
and cultural assumptions of the social system that generated it.
Within the present context, psychological warfare can best be un-
derstood as a group of strategies and tactics designed to achieve the
ideological, political, or military objectives of the sponsoring organi-
zation (typically a government or political movement) through exploi-
tation of a target audience's cultural-psychological attributes and its
communication system. Put another way, psychological warfare is the
application of mass communication to modern social conflict: it focuses
on the combined use of violence and more conventional forms of com-
munication to achieve politicomilitary goals.
A more complete illustration of the U.S. government's view of psy-
chological warfare can be found in the definition used by the U.S. Army
in war planning during the early cold war years. The army's definition
was classified as top secret at the time it was promulgated (early 1948)
12
SCIENCE OF COERCION
and remained officially secret until the late 1980s, when I obtained a
collection of early psychological warfare planning records through a
Freedom of Information Act request. One of these documents reads:
Psychological warfare employs all moral and physical means, other than
orthodox military operations, which tend to:
a. destroy the will and the ability of the enemy to fight.
b. deprive him of the support of his allies and neutrals.
c. increase in our own troops and allies the will to victory.
Psychological warfare employs any weapon to influence the mind of the
enemy. The weapons are psychological only in the effect they produce
and not because of the nature of the weapons themselves. In this light,
overt (white), covert (black), and gray propaganda; subversion; sabotage;
special operations; guerrilla warfare; espionage; political, cultural, eco-
nomic, and racial pressures are all effective weapons. They are effective
because they produce dissension, distrust, fear and hopelessness in the
minds of the enemy, not because they originate in the psyche of pro-
paganda or psychological warfare agencies.
The phrase "special operations," as used here, is defined in a second
document as
those activities against the enemy which are conducted by allied or
friendly forces behind enemy lines [They] include psychological war-
fare (black), clandestine warfare, subversion, sabotage, and miscella-
neous operations such as assassination, target capture and rescue of
downed airmen. 36
The army study goes on to summarize several of the tactics of per-
suasion just outlined, the three most basic of which are known as
"white," "black," and "gray" propaganda. "White propaganda," the
army states, "stress[es] simplicity, clarity and repetition." It is designed
to be perceived by its audience as truthful, balanced, and factual, and
the United States publicly acknowledged its promotion of this type of
information through outlets such as the Voice of America. "Black"
propaganda, in contrast, "stresses trouble, confusion, . . . and terror." 27
A variation of black propaganda tactics involves forging enemy docu-
ments and distributing them to target audiences as a means of discred-
iting rival powers. The U.S. government officially denies that it employs
Defining Psychological War
13
black propaganda, but in fact it has long been an integral aspect of U.S.
foreign and domestic policy. "Gray" propaganda, as its name suggests,
exists somewhere between "white" and "black" and typically involves
planting false information about rivals in news outlets that claim to be
independent of the U.S. government. 28
Other U.S. Army and National Security Council documents from the
same period stress three additional attributes of the U.S. psychological
warfare strategy of the day: the use of "plausible deniability" to permit
the government to deny responsibility for "black" operations that were
in truth originated by the United States; 29 a conscious policy of polarizing
neutral nations into either "pro-" or "anti-U.S." camps; 30 and the
clandestine targeting of the U.S. population, in addition to that of foreign
countries, for psychological operations. 31
Throughout this book, psychological warfare and psychological op-
erations encompass this range of activities, as specified by the Army
and the National Security Council. Several points should be underlined.
First, psychological warfare in the U.S. conception has consistently
made use of a wide range of violence, including guerrilla warfare,
assassination, sabotage, and, more fundamentally, the maintenance of
manifestly brutal regimes in client states abroad. Second, it also has
involved a variety of propaganda or media work, ranging from overt
(white) newscasting to covert (black) propaganda. Third, the targets of
U.S. psychological warfare were not only the "enemy," but also the
people of the United States and its allies.
In the pages that follow I first discuss U.S. psychological warfare prior
to 1945, stressing the early work of noted communication theorists
Harold Lasswell and Walter Lippmann and the pioneer studies under-
written by the Rockefeller Foundation. I then describe the emergence
of informal social networks among communication researchers em-
ployed in psychological warfare projects during World War II.
Turning to the postwar period, I next trace the interdependent evo-
lution of psychological warfare and communication research during the
cold war. I pay special attention to Public Opinion Quarterly (POQ) —
long regarded as among the most prestigious mainstream academic
journals of communication research — as a barometer of the impact of
psychological warfare programs on academic concepts of what com-
munication "is," what it could be, and how best to study it.
14
SCIENCE OF COERCION
In the final chapters I review the scientific legacy of U.S. government
psychological warfare contracting between 1945 and 1960 and sum-
marize some insights into how these programs have affected precon-
ceptions about communication, ideology, and responsible scholarship
in the United States.
2
World War and Early Modern
Communication Research
Psychological warfare is not new, of course. It is a modern coalescence
and development of very old methods. Some of the earliest human
civilizations used symbols, masks, and totems as instruments of power, 1
and the ancient Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu documented the
use of relatively sophisticated "psychological" tactics in both warfare
and civil administration as early as the fifth century B.C.E. 2 Closer to
home, the native peoples of North America have a strong tradition of
using symbols and ceremony to cement tribal morale and (more rarely)
to terrify rivals that was established well before the European invasion. 3
Similarly, European settlers in American made extensive use of pro-
paganda tailored to various audiences, guerrilla warfare, and terror
during the revolt against England, 4 the Mexican War, 5 the U.S. Civil
War, 6 and the long campaign to wrest control of the continent from
indigenous peoples.
But it was not until World War I that the U.S. government institu-
tionalized and employed psychological warfare in its modern sense. In
1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed George Creel to lead an
elite Committee of Public Information made up of the U.S. secretaries
of war, navy, and state. As Harold Lasswell wrote, Creel's new office
was "the equivalent of appointing a separate cabinet minister for pro-
paganda . . . responsible for every aspect of propaganda work, both at
home and abroad." 7 President Wilson played a surprisingly strong per-
sonal role in devising U.S. psychological operations of his day, re-
16
SCIENCE OF COERCION
viewing Creel's proposals for operations and even revising the galley
proofs of propaganda pamphlets prior to their distribution. 8 The U.S.
War Department meanwhile established a small psychological warfare
subsection within the intelligence division of the War Department Gen-
eral Staff, and a parallel propaganda section under the general head-
quarters of the U.S. Expeditionary Forces in Europe. 9
Much of the bureaucratic momentum for psychological warfare dis-
sipated in the wake of the war, however. The War Department disbanded
its psychological and propaganda sections in 1918, shortly after the
Allied victory. The Creel committee dissolved in 1919, ending virtually
all formal coordination of U.S. overseas propaganda efforts for the next
twenty years. By the time the United States entered World War II in
1941, there was only one officer in the U.S. War Department General
Staff who had had psychological warfare experience. 10
In the United States, the psychological warfare projects of World
War I left their strongest legacy in academic circles, particularly in the
then embryonic field of communication research. Harold Lasswell's
1926 dissertation entitled "Propaganda Technique in the World War"
examined the belligerents' propaganda programs as case studies in
persuasive communication, exploring wide-ranging concepts such as
political communication strategies, audience psychology, and manip-
ulation of symbols. Similarly, Walter Lippmann based his two keystone
texts, Public Opinion (1922) 12 and The Phantom Public (1925), 13 largely
on his wartime experiences as chief leaflet writer and editor of a U.S.
propaganda unit with the American Expeditionary Forces, and as sec-
retary of The Inquiry, a prototypical U.S. intelligence agency organized
by President Wilson to support the U.S. negotiating team in Paris. 14
Both works investigated the impact of the new phenomenon of gen-
uinely mass communication on Western industrial society. Both re-
vealed the complex and often paradoxical relationship between mass
communication and the professed values of democracies. Lasswell and
Lippmann argued that new technologies for communication and trans-
portation had awakened millions of disenfranchised people to a world
outside their factories and villages, but that the traditional economic,
political, and social structures that had shaped life during the nineteenth
century remained in place. This led to potential explosions, as Lasswell
and Lippmann saw things, including the Bolshevik revolution of 1917
and the wave of labor rebellions that swept through Europe and the
United States in the wake of World War I.
World War and Early Modern Communication Research 17
Lippmann's career during these years illustrates a phenomenon that
was to become much more common in the aftermath of World War II:
He was an intellectual who shaped psychological strategy during the
war itself, and then helped integrate that experience into the social
sciences once most of the shooting was over. Lippmann's highly influ-
ential concept of the "stereotype," for example, contended that new
communication and transportation technologies had created a "world
that we have to deal with politically [that is] out of reach, out of sight,
out of mind." The "pictures in our heads" of this world — the ster-
eotypes — " are acted upon by groups of people, or by individuals acting
in the name of groups." 15 The complexity and pace of the new world
that Lippmann envisaged, together with the seeming ease with which
stereotypes could be manipulated for political ends, led him to conclude
that "representative government . . . cannot be worked successfully, no
matter what the basis of election, unless there is an independent, expert
organization for making the unseen facts [of the new world] intelligible
to those who have to make the decisions." 16 The converse of that
proposition was that decision makers had a responsibility to repair the
"defective organization of public opinion," as Lippmann put it, in the
interests of social efficiency and the greater good. These concepts, first
introduced in Public Opinion, are illustrated throughout that text with
references to Lippmann's wartime experiences as a propagandist and
intelligence specialist.
Persuasive communication aimed at largely disenfranchised masses
became central to Lippmann's strategy for domestic government and
international relations. He saw mass communication as a major source
of the modern crisis and as a necessary instrument for any managing
elite. The social sciences offered tools that could make administration
of what would otherwise be highly unstable social structures relatively
rational and effective, he contended. In an era when methods of social
supervision in industrial societies still mainly consisted of guns and
policemen's clubs, many academics and intellectuals hailed Lippmann's
insights as enlightened and humane. 17
Lasswell extended the idea, giving it a Machiavellian twist. He em-
phasized employing persuasive media and selectively using assassina-
tions, violence, and other coercion as means of "communicating" with
and managing disenfranchised people. He advocated what he regarded
as "scientific" application of persuasion and precise violence, in con-
trast to bludgeon tactics. "Propaganda [has attained] eminence as the
18
SCIENCE OF COERCION
one means of mass mobilization which is cheaper than violence, bribery
and other possible control techniques," he wrote in 1933, adding that
"successful social and political management often depends on proper
coordination of propaganda with coercion, violent or non-violent; eco-
nomic inducement (including bribery); diplomatic negotiation; and other
techniques." 18 "Propaganda must be coordinated with information and
espionage services which can supply material to the propagandists and
report progress of propaganda work. That propaganda can be effectively
correlated with diplomatic, military and economic pressures was abun-
dantly demonstrated during the [First] World War." 19
Lasswell understood that communication is intimately bound up with
social order. Looked at dialectically, human communication and various
forms of social order seem to define one another, to establish one
another's boundaries; they probably cannot exist in isolation from one
another. In this sense, communication might be understood as both the
conduit for and the actual substance of human culture and consciousness.
Both the concept and the term "communication" had evolved from
a far richer tradition than the cramped model offered by Lippmann and
Lasswell. Etymologists say the word entered the English language
around the fourteenth century, derived from the Latin com (literally
"together") and munia ("duties"), meaning "the sharing of bur-
dens." 20 In this traditional vision, communication, to the extent it was
articulated, was seen as a process of sharing with others (through cultural
interchange, ceremony, commerce, etc.) within any particular social
context, as distinct from existing primarily as a medium for giving
directions. That understanding of communication's root meaning can
also be seen in related terms — community, commune, communion, and
so on. Any society's distribution of its "burdens" may vary greatly
from another's, of course, and there is little assurance that "sharing"
is necessarily equitable. But the dialectical link between the collective,
interactive attributes of communication and the attributes of any given
social order seems to remain steady, even in very different societies.
Lippmann and Lasswell articulated a very narrow vision that substi-
tuted, for communication as such, one manifestation of communication
that is particularly pronounced in hierarchical industrial states. Put most
bluntly, they contended that communication's essence was its utility as
an instrument for imposing one's will on others, and preferably on
masses of others. This instrumentalist conception of communication
World War and Early Modern Communication Research 19
was consistent with their experience of war and with emerging mass
communication technologies of the day, which in turn reflected and to
an extent embodied the existing social order.
For Lasswell, the study of all social communication could be reduced
to "who says what to whom with what effect" — a dictum that is prac-
tically inscribed in stone over the portals of those U.S. colleges offering
communication as a field of study. This was a seemingly simple, logical
approach to analysis of communication, but it carried with it sweeping
implications. Lippmann and Lasswell's articulation of communication-
as-domination permitted a significant step forward in applying a posi-
tivist scientific method to the study of social communication. Positivism
has traditionally been based in part on taking complex, unmeasurable
phenomena and breaking them up into discrete parts, measuring those
parts, and bit by bit building up a purportedly objective understanding
of the phenomenon as a whole. Its early applications in the social
sciences in the United States had been pioneered at the University of
Chicago, Columbia University, and other academic centers.
New measurement techniques of this sort often have substantial im-
pact on society outside of academe, however. In this case, Lasswell's
formulation dovetailed so closely with emerging commercial and po-
litical forces in the United States that his slogan became the common
wisdom among U.S. social scientists almost overnight. By reducing
communication to the Lasswellian model of who says what, et cetera,
it became possible for the first time to systematically isolate and measure
those aspects of communication that were of greatest relevance to pow-
erful groups in U.S. society.
The power of Lasswell's model (and its many derivatives) began with
its ability to help create commercially viable products and services. It
went beyond that, however, to permit supplanting and often suppressing
rival visions of what social communication is or could be. Here's how:
For mass consumer societies to establish and maintain themselves, it
seems to be necessary for media to have the capacity to sell the attention
of mass audiences to advertisers, who use that attention to promote
their goods and services. To do that successfully, media organizations
must have some means for measuring ' 'popular attention" (and similar
indices) in order to effectively market their services to potential adver-
tisers. Lasswell's model and the various methodological innovations
associated with it — which were introduced by Frank Stanton, Paul La-
20
SCIENCE OF COERCION
zarsfeld, Hadley Cantril, and others — provided the necessary concep-
tual foundation for measurement of the services media sell to their
customers.
From the advertisers' point of view, however, the simple sale of
products and services is not enough. Their commercial success in a
mass market depends to an important degree on their ability to substitute
their values and worldview for those previously held by their audience,
typically through seduction and deflection of rival worldviews. Auto-
mobile marketers, for example, do not simply tout their products for
their usefulness as transportation; they seek to convince their customers
to define their personal goals, self-esteem, and values in terms of owning
or using the product. In mass consumer societies many customers do
not simply purchase commodities; they instead eventually become them,
literally and figuratively.
Put another way, early modern communication research often pre-
sented the de facto voicelessness of ordinary people — voicelessness in
all fields other than selection of commodities, that is — as though it was
communication itself. Terms like "Pepsi Generation," "Heartbeat of
America," and "I Love What You Do for Me" (to cite modern ex-
amples) have always been more than simple advertising slogans. They
have been successful from the advertisers' point of view only to the
extent they have defined a way of life.
Thus the (professed) ability to measure mass media messages and
the responses they trigger became one necessary prerequisite to a much
broader social shift, a shift in which modern consumer culture displaced
existing social forms. That process, moreover, consistently has been
marked by great violence, frequently including genocide, as the "mod-
ern" world overwhelms indigenous cultures and peoples.
The mainstream paradigm of communication studies in the United
States — its techniques, body of knowledge, institutional structure, and
so on — evolved symbiotically with modern consumer society generally,
and particularly with media industries and those segments of the econ-
omy most dependent on mass markets. 22 Communication research in
America has historically proved itself by going beyond simply observing
media behavior to finding ways to grease the skids for absorption and
suppression of rival visions of communication and social order.
Clearly, social communication necessarily involves a balancing of
conflicting forces. A "community," after all, cannot exist without some
World War and Early Modern Communication Research 21
form of social order; or, put another way, order defines the possible
means of sharing burdens. Lasswell and Lippmann, however, advocated
not just order in an abstract sense, but rather a particular social order
in the United States and the world in which forceful elites necessarily
ruled in the interests of their vision of the greater good. U.S. -style
consumer democracy was simply a relatively benign system for engi-
neering mass consent for the elites' authority; it could be dispensed
with when ordinary people reached the "wrong" conclusions. Lasswell
writes that the spread of literacy
did not release the masses from ignorance and superstition but altered
the nature of both and compelled the development of a whole new tech-
nique of control, largely through propaganda. ... [A propagandist's] re-
gard for men rests on no democratic dogmatisms about men being the
best judges of their own interests. The modem propagandist, like the
modem psychologist, recognizes that men are often poor judges of their
own interests. . . . [Those with power must cultivate] sensitiveness to
those concentrations of motive which are implicit and available for rapid
mobilization when the appropriate symbol is offered.. . . [The propa-
gandist is] no phrasemonger but a promoter of overt acts. 23
Lasswell and Lippmann favored relatively tolerant, pluralistic soci-
eties in which elite rule protected democracies from their own weak-
nesses — a modern form of noblesse oblige, so to speak. But the potential
applications of the communication-as-domination Zeitgeist extended far
beyond the purposes that they would have personally approved. Nazi in-
tellectuals in Germany proved to be instrumental in many aspects of com-
munication studies throughout the 1930s, both as innovators of suc-
cessful techniques and as spurs to communication studies outside of
Germany intended to counteract the Nazi party's apparent success with
propaganda. Josef Goebbels' work in social manipulation via radio,
film, and other media is well known. 24 On a more academic plane, a
bright young security service agent, Otto Ohlendorf, established a Ger-
man research center known as the Deutsche Lebensgebiete in 1939 to
apply new tools such as opinion surveys to the problem of determining
who said what to whom with what effect inside Hitler's Germany. He
was successful, on the whole, and his performance at the Deutsche
Lebensgebiete laid the foundation for his later career as commandant
of SS Einsatzgruppe D in the Caucasus, where he organized the murder
22
SCIENCE OF COERCION
of ninety thousand people, most of them Jewish women and children.
Ohlendorfs principal sponsor and mentor was a leading SS intellectual,
Dr. Reinhard Hoehn of the Institute for State Research at the University
of Berlin, who emerged after the war as one of Germany's most prom-
inent experts on question of public opinion and the state. 26 Several other
leading German mass communication and public opinion specialists
contributed their skills to Nazi publicity and opinion-monitoring proj-
ects. Notable among them was Elisabeth Noelle -Neumann, who began
her career at the Goebbels intellectual journal Das Reich and eventually
emerged as one of Europe's most celebrated communication theorists. 27
"Worldview Warfare" and World War II
During the second half of the 1930s, the Rockefeller Foundation un-
derwrote much of the most innovative communication research then
under way in the United States. There was virtually no federal support
for the social sciences at the time, and corporate backing for the field
usually remained limited to proprietary marketing studies. The foun-
dation's administrators believed, however, that mass media constituted
a uniquely powerful force in modern society, reports Brett Gary, 28 and
financed a new project on content analysis for Harold Lasswell at the
Library of Congress, Hadley Cantril's Public Opinion Research Project
at Princeton University, the establishment of Public Opinion Quarterly
at Princeton, Douglas Waples' newspaper and reading studies at the
University of Chicago, Paul Lazarsfeld's Office of Radio Research at
Columbia University, and other important programs.
As war approached, the Rockefeller Foundation clearly favored ef-
forts designed to find a "democratic prophylaxis" that could immunize
the United States' large immigrant population from the effects of Soviet
and Axis propaganda. In 1939, the foundation organized a series of
secret seminars with men it regarded as leading communication scholars
to enlist them in an effort to consolidate public opinion in the United
States in favor of war against Nazi Germany — a controversial propo-
sition opposed by many conservatives, religious leaders, and liberals at
the time — and to articulate a reasonably clear-cut set of ideological and
methodological preconceptions for the emerging field of communication
research. 29
Harold Lasswell, who had the ear of foundation administrator John
World War and Early Modern Communication Research 23
Marshall at these gatherings, over the next two years won support for
a theory that seemed to resolve the conflict between the democratic
values that are said to guide U.S. society, on the one hand, and the
manipulation and deceit that often lay at the heart of projects intended
to engineer mass consent, on the other. Briefly, the elite of U.S. society
("those who have money to support research," as Lasswell bluntly put
it) should systematically manipulate mass sentiment in order to preserve
democracy from threats posed by authoritarian societies such as Nazi
Germany or the Soviet Union.
One Rockefeller seminar participant, Donald Slesinger (former dean
of the school of social science at the University of Chicago), blasted
Lasswell's claims as using a democratic guise to tacitly accept the ob-
jectives and methods of a new form of authoritarianism. "We [the
Rockefeller seminar] have been willing, without thought, to sacrifice
both truth and human individuality in order to bring about given mass
responses to war stimuli," Slesinger contended. "We have thought in
terms of fighting dictatorships-by-force through the establishment of
dictatorship-by-manipulation." 30 Slesinger's view enjoyed some sup-
port from other participants and from Rockefeller Foundation officers
such as Joseph Willits, who criticized what he described as authoritar-
ian or even fascist aspects of Lasswell's arguments. Despite this resis-
tance, the social polarization created by the approaching war strongly
favored Lasswell, and in the end he enjoyed substantial new funding
and an expanded staff courtesy of the foundation. Slesinger drifted
away from the Rockefeller seminars and appears to have rapidly lost
influence within the community of academic communication specialists.
World War II spurred the emergence of psychological warfare as a
particularly promising new form of applied communication research.
The personal, social, and scientific networks established in U.S. social
sciences during World War II, particularly among communication re-
searchers and social psychologists, later played a central role in the
evolution (or "social construction") of U.S. sociology after the war.
A detailed discussion of U.S. psychological operations during World
War II is of course outside the scope of this book. There is a large
literature on the subject, which is discussed briefly in the Bibliographic
Essay at the end of this text. A few points are worth mentioning,
however, to introduce some of the personalities and concepts that would
later play a prominent role in psychological operations and communi-
cation studies after 1945.
24
SCIENCE OF COERCION
The phrase "psychological warfare" is reported to have first entered
English in 1941 as a translated mutation of the Nazi term Weltan-
schauungskrieg (literally, worldview warfare), meaning the purportedly
scientific application of propaganda, terror, and state pressure as a means
of securing an ideological victory over one's enemies. 31 William "Wild
Bill" Donovan, then director of the newly established U.S. intelligence
agency Office of Strategic Services (OSS), viewed an understanding of
Nazi psychological tactics as a vital source of ideas for "Americanized"
versions of many of the same stratagems. Use of the new term quickly
became widespread throughout the U.S. intelligence community. For
Donovan psychological warfare was destined to become a full arm of
the U.S. military, equal in status to the army, navy, and air force. 32
Donovan was among the first in the United States to articulate a more
or less unified theory of psychological warfare. As he saw it, the "en-
gineering of consent" techniques used in peacetime propaganda cam-
paigns could be quite effectively adapted to open warfare. Pro-Allied
propaganda was essential to reorganizing the U.S. economy for war
and for creating public support at home for intervention in Europe,
Donovan believed. Fifth-column movements could be employed abroad
as sources of intelligence and as morale -builders for populations under
Axis control. He saw "special operations" — meaning sabotage, sub-
version, commando raids, and guerrilla movements — as useful for soft-
ening up targets prior to conventional military assaults. "Donovan's
concept of psychological warfare was all-encompassing," writes Colo-
nel Alfred Paddock, who has specialized in this subject for the U.S.
Army War College. "Donovan's visionary dream was to unify these
functions in support of conventional (military) unit operations, thereby
forging a 'new instrument of war.' " 33
Donovan, a prominent Wall Street lawyer and personal friend of
Franklin Roosevelt, convinced FDR to establish a central, civilian in-
telligence agency that would gather foreign intelligence, coordinate
analysis of information relevant to the war, and conduct propaganda
and covert operations both at home and abroad. In July 1941 FDR
created the aptly named Office of the Coordinator of Information, plac-
ing Donovan in charge. 34
But that ambitious plan soon foundered on the rocks of Washington's
bureaucratic rivalries. By early 1942 the White House split the "white"
(official) propaganda functions into a new agency, which eventually
became the Office of War Information (OWI), while Donovan reor-
ganized the intelligence, covert action, and "black" (unacknowledge-
World War and Early Modern Communication Research 25
able) propaganda functions under deeper secrecy as the OSS. Officially,
the new OSS was subordinate to the military leadership of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, but the relationship between the military and the civilian
OSS was never smooth. Donovan frequently used his personal rela-
tionship with FDR to sidestep the military's efforts to restrict the OSS's
growing influence. 35
Similar innovations soon spread through other military branches,
usually initiated by creative outsiders from the worlds of journalism or
commerce who saw "psychological" techniques as a means to sidestep
entrenched military bureaucracies and enhance military performance.
Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, a longtime Wall Street
colleague of Donovan, established a small, highly secret Psychologic
Branch within the War Department General Staff G-2 (Intelligence)
organization. (McCloy is probably better known today for his later work
as U.S. high commissioner of Germany, chairman of the Chase Bank,
member of the Warren Commission, and related posts). 36 McCloy's
Psychologic Branch was reorganized several times, briefly folded in the
OSS, shifted back to military control, and renamed at least twice. The
Joint Chiefs meanwhile established a series of high-level interagency
committees intended to coordinate U.S. psychological operations in the
field, including those of the relatively small Psychological Warfare
Branches attached to the headquarters staffs of U.S. military com-
manders in each theater of war. If this administrative structure was not
confusing enough, the psychological warfare branch attached to Eisen-
hower's command in Europe soon grew into a Psychological Warfare
Division totaling about 460 men and women. 37
These projects helped define U.S. social science and mass commu-
nication studies long after the war had drawn to a close. Virtually all
of the scientific community that was to emerge during the 1950s as
leaders in the field of mass communication research spent the war years
performing applied studies on U.S. and foreign propaganda, Allied
troop morale, public opinion (both domestic and international), clan-
destine OSS operations, or the then emerging technique of deriving
useful intelligence from analysis of newspapers, magazines, radio
broadcasts, and postal censorship intercepts.
The day-to-day war work of U.S. psychological warfare specialists
varied considerably. DeWitt Poole — a State Department expert in an-
ticommunist propaganda who had founded Public Opinion Quarterly
while on sabbatical at Princeton before the war — became the chief of
the Foreign Nationalities Branch of the OSS. There he led OSS efforts
26
SCIENCE OF COERCION
to recruit suitable agents from immigrant communities inside the United
States, to monitor civilian morale, and to analyze foreign-language
publications for nuggets of intelligence. Sociologists and anthropolo-
gists such as Alexander Leighton and Margaret Mead concentrated on
identifying schisms in Japanese culture suitable for exploitation in U.S.
radio broadcasts in Asia, while Samuel Stouffer's Research Branch of
the U.S. Army specialized in ideological indoctrination of U.S. troops.
Hadley Cantril meanwhile adapted survey research techniques to the
task of clandestine intelligence collection, including preparations for
the U.S. landing in North Africa. 38
There were six main U.S. centers of psychological warfare and related
studies during the conflict. Several of these centers went through name
changes and reorganizations in the course of the war, but they can be
summarized as follows: (1) Samuel Stouffer's Research Branch of the
U.S. Army's Division of Morale; (2) the Office of War Information
(OWI) led by Elmer Davis and its surveys division under Elmo Wilson;
(3) the Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) of the U.S. Army, com-
manded by Brigadier General Robert McClure; (4) the Office of Strategic
Services (OSS) led by William Donovan; (5) Rensis Likert's Division
of Program Surveys at the Department of Agriculture, which provided
field research personnel in the United States for the army, OWI, Treas-
ury Department, and other government agencies; and (6) Harold Las-
swell's War Communication Division at the Library of Congress.
Dozens of prominent social scientists participated in the war through
these organizations, in some cases serving in two or more groups in
the course of the conflict. The OWI, for example, employed Elmo Roper
(of the Roper survey organization), Leonard Doob (Yale), Wilbur
Schramm (University of Illinois and Stanford), Alexander Leighton
(Cornell), Leo Lowenthal (Institut fur Sozialforschung and University
of California), Hans Speier (RAND Corp.), Nathan Leites (RAND),
Edward Barrett (Columbia), and Clyde Kluckhohn (Harvard), among
others. 39 (The institutions in parentheses simply indicate the affiliations
for which these scholars may be best known.) OWI simultaneously
extended contracts for communications research and consulting to Paul
Lazarsfeld, Hadley Cantril, Frank Stanton, George Gallup, and to Ren-
sis Likert's team at the Agriculture Department. 40 OWI contracting also
provided much of the financial backbone for the then newly founded
National Opinion Research Center. 41
In addition to his OWI work, Nathan Leites also served as Lasswell's
World War and Early Modern Communication Research 27
senior research assistant at the Library of Congress project, as did Heinz
Eulau (Stanford). 42 Other prominent contributors to the Lasswell project
included Irving Janis (Yale) and the young Ithiel de Sola Pool (MIT),
who, with Leites, had already begun systematic content analysis of
communist publications long before the war was over. 43 Lasswell's
Library of Congress project is widely remembered today as the foun-
dation of genuinely systematic content analysis in the United States. 44
At the Army's Psychological Warfare Division, some prominent staf-
fers were William S. Paley (CBS), C. D. Jackson (Time/Life), W.
Phillips Davison (RAND and Columbia), Saul Padover (New School
for Social Research), John W. Riley (Rutgers), Morris Janowitz (Institut
fur Sozialforschung and University of Michigan), Daniel Lerner (MIT
and Stanford), Edward Shils (University of Chicago), and New York
attorney Murray Gurfein (later co-author with Janowitz), among oth-
ers. 45 Of these, Davison, Padover, Janowitz, and Gurfein were OSS
officers assigned to the Psychological Warfare Division to make use of
their expertise in communication and German social psychology. 46 Other
prominent OSS officers who later contributed to the social sciences
include Howard Becker (University of Wisconsin), Alex Inkeles (Har-
vard), Walter Langer (University of Wisconsin), Douglas Cater (Aspen
Institute), and of course Herbert Marcuse (Institut fur Sozialforschung
and New School). 47 OSS wartime contracting outside the government
included arrangements for paid social science research by Stanford, the
University of California at Berkeley, Columbia, Princeton, Yale's In-
stitute of Human Relations, and the National Opinion Research Center,
which was then at the University of Denver. 48 Roughly similar lists of
social scientists and scholarly contractors can be discovered at each of
the government's centers of wartime communications and public opinion
research. 49
The practical significance of these social linkages has been explored
by social psychologist John A. Clausen, who is a veteran of Samuel
Stouffer's Research Branch. Clausen made a systematic study during
the early 1980s of the postwar careers of his former colleagues who
had gone into the fields of public opinion research, sociology, and
psychology. 50 Some twenty-five of twenty-seven veterans who could
be located responded to his questionnaire; of these, twenty-four reported
that their wartime work had had "lasting implications" and "a major
influence on [their] subsequent career." Clausen quotes the reply of
psychologist Nathan Maccoby (Stanford): "The Research Branch not
28
SCIENCE OF COERCION
only established one of the best old-boy (or girl) networks ever, but an
alumnus of the Branch had an open door to most relevant jobs and
career lines. We were a lucky bunch." Nearly three-fifths of the re-
spondents indicated that the Research Branch experience "had a major
influence on the direction or character of their work in the decade after
the war," Clausen continues, "and all but three of the remainder in-
dicated a substantial influence. . . . [F]ully three -fourths reported the
Branch experience to have been a very important influence on their
careers as a whole." 51
Respondents stressed two reasons for this enduring impact. First, the
wartime experience permitted young scholars to closely work with rec-
ognized leaders in the field — Samuel Stouffer, Leonard Cottrell, Carl
Hovland, and others — as well as with civilian consultants such as Paul
Lazarsfeld, Louis Guttman, and Robert Merton. In effect, the Army's
Research Branch created an extraordinary postgraduate school with ob-
vious scholarly benefits for both "students" and the seasoned "pro-
fessors."
Second, the common experience created a network of professional
contacts that almost all respondents to the survey found to be very
valuable in their subsequent careers. They tapped these contacts later
for professional opportunities and for project funding, according to
Clausen. "Perhaps most intriguing" in this regard, Clausen writes,
was the number of our members who became foundation executives.
Charles Dollard became president of Carnegie. Donald Young shifted
from the presidency of SSRC [Social Science Research Council] to that
of Russell Sage, where he ultimately recruited Leonard Cottrell. Leland
DeVinney went from Harvard to the Rockefeller Foundation. William
McPeak . . . helped set up the Ford Foundation and became its vice
president. W. Parker Mauldin became vice president of the Population
Council. The late Lyle Spencer [of Science Research Associates] . ..
endowed a foundation that currendy supports a substantial body of social
science research. 52
There was a somewhat similar sociometric effect among veterans of
OWI propaganda projects. OWI's overseas director Edward Barrett
points out that old-boy networks rooted in common wartime experiences
in psychological warfare extended well beyond the social sciences.
"Among OWI alumni," he wrote in 1953, are
World War and Early Modern Communication Research 29
the publishers of Time, Look, Fortune, and several dailies; editors of
such magazines as Holiday, Coronet, Parade, and the Saturday Review,
editors of the Denver Post. New Orleans Times-Piscayune, and others;
the heads of the Viking Press, Harper & Brothers, and Farrar, Straus and
Young; two Hollywood Oscar winners; a two-time Pulitzer prizewinner;
the board chairman of CBS and a dozen key network executives; Pres-
ident Eisenhower's chief speech writer; the editor of Reader's Digest
international editions; at least six partners of large advertising agencies;
and a dozen noted social scientists. 53
Barrett himself went on to become chief of the U.S. government's overt
psychological warfare effort from 1950 to 1952 and later dean of the
Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and founder of the Columbia
Journalism Review. 54
It is wise to be cautious in evaluating the political significance of
these networks, of course. Obviously Herbert Marcuse drew quite dif-
ferent political conclusions from his experience than did, say, Harold
Lasswell, and it is well known that even some of the once closely knit
staff of the Institut fur Sozialforschung who emigrated to the United
States eventually clashed bitterly over political issues during the cold
war. 55 Nevertheless, the common experience of wartime psychological
warfare work became one step in a process through which various
leaders in the social sciences engaged one another in tacit alliances to
promote their particular interpretations of society. Their wartime ex-
periences contributed substantially to the construction of a remarkably
tight circle of men and women who shared several important conceptions
about mass communication research. They regarded mass communi-
cation as a tool for social management and as a weapon in social conflict,
and they expressed common assumptions concerning the usefulness of
quantitative research — particularly experimental and quasi-experimental
effects research, opinion surveys, and quantitative content analysis —
as a means of illuminating what communication "is" and improving
its application to social management. They also demonstrated common
attitudes toward at least some of the ethical questions intrinsic to per-
forming applied social research on behalf of a government. The Clausen
study strongly suggests that at Stouffer's Research Branch, at least,
World War II psychological warfare work established social networks
that opened doors to crucial postwar contacts inside the government,
funding agencies, and professional circles. Barrett's comments con-
cerning the Psychological Warfare Division suggest a similar pattern
30
SCIENCE OF COERCION
there. As will be discussed in more depth in the next chapter, the various
studies prepared by these scientists during the war — always at govern-
ment expense and frequently involving unprecedented access to human
research subjects — also created vast new data bases of social information
that would become the raw material from which a number of influential
postwar social science careers would be built.
3
"The Social Scientists Make a
Huge Contribution"
Following World War I the U.S. government had shut down its pro-
paganda and foreign intelligence agencies within months after signing
the Treaty of Versailles. After World War II, by contrast, the Truman
and Eisenhower administrations institutionalized these agencies and en-
couraged them to acquire sweeping powers. This policy had consid-
erable implications for the social sciences in the United States, because
the leaders of these agencies frequently considered the social sciences
essential to their missions.
At the same time, the meaning of the term "psychological warfare"
evolved in important ways that are outlined in this chapter. During
World War II, the United States had been unambiguously committed
to a declared war against a clear enemy, and psychological warfare had
contributed to that struggle. Postwar conflicts were considerably dif-
ferent: war had not been "declared" in any traditional form, even in
the long battles in Korea and Vietnam; the front lines, disputed terri-
tories, and even the enemy were almost always hazy; and each major
international faction regularly deceived its own population and the world
at large concerning how and why the contests were fought.
Within that context, concepts like "psychological warfare" and
"psychological operations" acquired new layers of euphemistic expla-
nations and cover stories. As will be seen, these myths permitted na-
tional governments to pursue covert political operations abroad, and
even fight medium-scale wars, while at the same time evading virtually
32
SCIENCE OF COERCION
all oversight and accountability for what they were doing. Most U.S.
social scientists, like most Americans generally, were kept well out of
the loop when the national security apparatchiks made decisions.
But there were exceptions. For those scientists with the connections
and insights necessary to refine U.S. government tactics for pursuing
purported American interests abroad, the ambiguity of the cold war
offered significant professional opportunities. For the first time in peace-
time, the U.S. government was an eager customer for some types of
social science expertise, particularly concerning foreign countries. This
was especially true of the rapidly growing U.S. intelligence community.
"In all of the intelligence that enters into waging of war soundly and
the waging of peace soundly, it is the social scientists who make a huge
contribution," Brigadier General John Magruder of the OSS testified
during Senate hearings in early November 1945.' Political, economic,
geographic, and psychological factors were of "extraordinary impor-
tance" to the overall postwar intelligence effort, he insisted, adding
that
the government of the United States would be well advised to do all in
its power to promote the development of knowledge in the field of social
sciences. . . . Were we to develop a dearth of social scientists, all national
intelligence agencies servicing policy makers in peace or war would be
directly handicapped. . . . [R]esearch of social scientists [is] indispensable
to the sound development of national intelligence in peace and war. 2
Magruder introduced a chart into the Senate record illustrating the
OSS leadership's perspective, which is revealing on at least two counts
(see Figure 1). In the OSS leadership's view, wartime and peacetime
operations formed a clear continuum. While different tactics could be
employed as situations changed, the intelligence community's funda-
mental perspective remained that U.S. interests could be best achieved
by dominating rival powers, regardless of whether the United States
was technically at peace or at war at any given time. 3 Magruder saw
peaceful engineering of consent for U.S. aims as desirable when it
worked, but the option of using violence to achieve national goals
remained essential. Moreover, as Figure 1 illustrates, the OSS also
believed that virtually every aspect of postwar intelligence operations
should employ sociology, social psychology, or both.
Despite the OSS leadership's ambitions, however, the shift from hot
33
34
SCIENCE OF COERCION
war to cold war — and the institutionalization of communication studies
that came in its wake — proceeded in fits and starts after 1945. OSS
chief Donovan had long been a favorite of Franklin Roosevelt, but he
was mistrusted by Roosevelt's successor, Harry S Truman, and by many
in the U.S. Congress. Truman ordered the OSS dissolved in late 1945
and transferred most of its intelligence collection and psychological
warfare staff to the Department of State. 4
A second important World War II psychological warfare agency, the
OWI, had already been dismantled by Republicans in Congress, who
had concluded that OWI's propaganda in the United States had provided
de facto support for Roosevelt's 1944 reelection drive by praising his
leadership in the war. A number of southern Democrats on Capitol Hill
had also been offended by OWI's promotion of racial integration in the
army and in war plants — an example of the progressive agenda of many
government propaganda programs during the Roosevelt era — and they
too had voted to break up the agency. 5 Stouffer's Research Branch in
the army did carry over into the postwar era, but under different lead-
ership and with greatly reduced funding. 6
Despite these shifts, the trend toward institutionalization and expan-
sion of postwar psychological operations asserted itself at least as early as
January 1946. That month, Truman established the Central Intelligence
Group (CIG), the immediate predecessor to the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), under the leadership of a political ally of the administra-
tion, General Hoyt Vandenberg of the Army Air Corps. 7 The CIG's
charter limited the agency's work to intelligence analysis; nonetheless,
its offices provided an institutional umbrella for a number of OSS veter-
ans with psychological warfare experience who might otherwise have re-
turned to civilian life. Less than two years after that, Truman replaced the
CIG with the CIA, the bulk of whose budget for the next decade was to be
dedicated to covert warfare, "black" propaganda, and other psycholog-
ical operations. 8
A pronounced drift emerged throughout the U.S. intelligence com-
munity toward U.S. intervention abroad to reintegrate failing European
empires, confront the Soviets, and link domestic dissent with communist
movements overseas. In January 1946 Major General W. G. Wyman,
chief of intelligence of the U.S. Army Ground Forces, prepared a
lengthy analysis reflecting his view of the ideological threats facing the
U.S. government and the measures he believed necessary to meet them.
American soldiers, occupation forces in Germany, and civilians at home
"The Social Scientists Make a Huge Contribution"
35
were all suffering from a serious "confusion of mind" when it came
to Marxism, he said.
Where is the mental penicillin that can be applied to our loose thinking
to insure the wholesome thought that is so urgently needed in our country
today? .. . Our troubles of the day — labor, demobilization, the discon-
tented soldier — these are the sores on which the vultures of Communism
will feed and fatten.
Wyman then proposed his solution:
There must be some agency, some group either within or outside our
national security forces, which can interest itself in these matters. There
must be some weapon by which we can defend ourselves from the secret
thing that is working at our vitals — this cancer of modem civilization.
... A new government policy is desperately needed to implement [this]
psychological effort. . . . We must combat this creeping shadow which is
in our midst. 9
Wyman's proposals were never openly adopted in the United States,
in part because cultural barriers in this country militate against a major
military role in civilian politics. But the U.S. Army did undertake
Wyman's ideological campaigns within the armed forces and among
civilian populations in areas then under U.S. military occupation such
as western Germany, Japan, and parts of Austria. There the army's
former Psychological Warfare Division (now reincarnated as part of the
Army's Civil Affairs Division) began a massive campaign for strength-
ening ideological unity among U.S. forces and for remolding attitudes
among the former enemy population.
Their effort must be ranked as one of the single largest campaigns
of purposive communication ever undertaken by a democratic society.
Brigadier General Robert McClure, the wartime chief of the Psycho-
logical Warfare Division, offered an inventory of the propaganda assets
the army brought to bear on international audiences and on U.S. soldiers.
McClure's list began with RIAS radio in Berlin broadcasting into eastern
Europe; the Stars and Stripes daily newspaper; more worldwide radio
broadcasts than the Voice of America; troop education programs (a
legacy of Stouffer's work) in both Europe and the Far East; fifty to
seventy-five new documentary films produced each year; up-to-the-
minute newsreels in three languages produced each week; control of all
36
SCIENCE OF COERCION
U.S. commercial films shown in occupied regions; control of postal
censorship and publication licensing of all newspaper, magazine, and
book publishers in the U.S. zones; operation of cultural centers in sixty
cities; publication of five glossy foreign-language magazines designed
for distribution to foreign audiences (the U.S. State Department was
producing but one such magazine, McClure noted with satisfaction);
printing of literally hundreds of millions of educational pamphlets and
leaflets; publication of daily U.S. military government newspapers in
three countries; and much more. 10 Not on McClure's list, but noteworthy
in the present context, were large public opinion survey operations under
the leadership of polling specialists Frederick W. Williams and Leo
Crespi (in Germany) and anthropologists Herbert Passin and John W.
Bennett (in Japan). Both became important centers for development of
U.S. overseas and foreign-language polling techniques. 11
The United States often adopted propaganda and psychological op-
erations as one substitute for U.S. soldiers abroad as America demo-
bilized much of its wartime army after 1945. By the end of the decade
of the 1940s, many U.S. policymakers regarded these efforts as having
been largely successful, though not yet completed. Determining the
effectiveness of these programs is probably impossible today, consid-
ering the passage of time and the difficulties inherent in any attempt to
disentangle communication effects from other social factors. The point
here, however, is that important factions in the U.S. security estab-
lishment believed propaganda and psychological warfare campaigns on
this scale to be essential to U.S. national security, and they were willing
to pour tens of millions of dollars into these programs. The perceived
success of these campaigns reinforced arguments within the government
in favor of expanded psychological operations against restless popula-
tions in Europe and the developing world, as well as against the Soviet
Union and its satellites.
Similar developments were under way in the fields of "black" and
"gray" propaganda, covert warfare, and other sensitive aspects of psy-
chological warfare. Between 1946 and 1950, the Truman administration
created a multimillion-dollar secret bureaucracy for conducting clan-
destine warfare. For nearly the next thirty years, the very existence of
this bureaucracy was denied repeatedly.
Much of the story of U.S. covert operations in postwar Europe and
Asia remains buried in classified files and is in fact protected by statute
from disclosure through the Freedom of Information Act or routine
"The Social Scientists Make a Huge Contribution"
37
declassification. The basic structure of this bureaucracy was revealed
for the first time during the congressional investigations following the
Watergate break-in, however. It is known, for example, that in the
summer of 1946 Secretary of War Robert Patterson ordered the army
to lay the administrative groundwork for the establishment of new Air-
borne Reconnaissance Units similar to the OSS teams that had assisted
guerrilla struggles in Nazi-occupied France and Yugoslavia during the
war. 13 (Despite the name, these groups specialized in sabotage and
paramilitary operations and had little to do with "reconnaissance" in
its usual sense.) The following spring, the State- Army-Navy- Air Force
Coordinating Committee (SANACC) — the highest level U.S. political-
military coordinating body of the day — created an elite interagency
subcommittee euphemistically titled the Special Studies and Evaluation
Subcommittee to "take those steps that are necessary to keep alive the
arts of psychological warfare . . . [and to ensure] that there should be a
nucleus of personnel capable of handling these arts in case an emergency
IT 14
arises.
That summer, Congress passed the National Security Act, a sweeping
reform of U.S. security agencies. This law created the CIA out of the
earlier CIG, established the National Security Council (NSC) to advise
the president on management of political-military strategy both at home
and abroad, and reorganized the armed services. 15 Among the first
questions faced by the new CIA was that of the constitutionality of
clandestine psychological operations. Within weeks of the founding of
the agency, the CIA's first director, Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter,
asked the agency's counsel for a formal legal opinion concerning
whether the 1947 law had authorized "secret propaganda and parami-
litary operations" in peacetime.
The CIA's general counsel, Lawrence Houston, replied that it had
not. The agency's charter authorized intelligence gathering and analysis,
Houston said, which meant the collection and review of facts. Covert
warfare and secret propaganda operations had not been approved by
Congress, and the CIA's expenditure of taxpayer money on unauthorized
activities would be against the law. Even if the president directly ordered
covert operations, Houston continued, it would be necessary for Con-
gress to specifically authorize the funds for them before they could be
carried out legally. 16
Houston's concerns led to two National Security Council actions on
December 9, 1947, that became the first formal foundation for U.S.
38
SCIENCE OF COERCION
covert warfare in peacetime. These decisions illustrate the extent to
which U.S. psychological warfare has had, from its inception, multiple,
overlapping layers of cover stories, deceits, and euphemistic explana-
tions even within the secret councils of government. In this case the
NSC created two such layers simultaneously, each contradicting the
other.
First, the NSC approved a relatively innocuous policy document
known as "NSC 4", entitled "Coordination of Foreign Information
Measures." This assigned the assistant secretary of state for public
affairs responsibility to lead "the immediate strengthening and coor-
dination of all foreign information measures of the U.S. Government
. . . to counteract effects of anti-U.S. propaganda." 17 Importantly, NSC
4 was classified as confidential, the lowest category of government
secret. Tens of thousands of government employees are permitted access
to confidential information, and the existence and nature of confidential
policies can be publicly discussed with members of the press, although
it is illegal to pass a confidential document to a person without a security
clearance. As a practical matter, this meant that word of this confidential
action would likely be publicized in the news media as an NSC "secret
decision" within days, perhaps within hours.
That is precisely what took place. In time, a series of public decisions
grew up around NSC 4 authorizing funding for the Voice of America,
scholarly exchange programs, operation of "America House" cultural
centers abroad, and similar overt propaganda programs. Officially, the
policy of the U.S. government on such measures was that "truth is our
weapon," as Edward Barrett — who was soon to be put in charge of the
effort — put it. Barrett's widely promoted policy asserted that the United
States openly presented its views on international controversies and
frankly discussed the flaws and the advantages of U.S. society in a bid
to win credibility for its point of view. This was not "propaganda" (in
the negative sense of that word), Barrett insisted; it was "truth." 18
In reality, however, only minutes after completing action on NSC 4,
the NSC took up a second measure: NSC 4~A. This was classified as
"top secret," a considerably stricter security rating. Legal circulation
of top-secret papers is limited to authorized persons with a need to know
of their contents; disclosure of even the existence of a top-secret decision
to any person outside that circle is barred. In NSC 4-A, the NSC directed
that the newly approved overt propaganda programs "must be supple-
mented by covert psychological operations." The National Security
"The Social Scientists Make a Huge Contribution"
39
Council's resolution secretly authorized the CIA to conduct these of-
ficially nonexistent programs and to administer them through channels
different from the "confidential" program (i.e., the public program)
authorized under NSC 4.' 9
The NSC's action removed the U.S. Congress and public from any
debate over whether to undertake psychological warfare abroad. The
NSC ordered that the operations themselves be designed to be "deni-
able," meaning "planned and executed [so] that any U.S. Government
responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that
if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any respon-
sibility." 20
This seemingly self-contradictory, multilayer approach helped con-
struct a euphemistic, bureaucratic sublanguage of terms that permitted
those who had been initiated into the arcana of national security to
discuss psychological operations and clandestine warfare in varying
degrees of specificity depending upon the audience, while simulta-
neously denying the very existence of these projects when it was po-
litically convenient to do so — a phenomenon that is crucial to
understanding the later role of U. S. social scientists in these enterprises.
In an added twist, NSC 4 established an officially confidential (but in
reality public) program concerning "Foreign Information Measures,"
which were sometimes referred to as "psychological measures" or
"psychological warfare" in public discussions. This paradoxical struc-
ture helped to preserve the myth that the United States was dealing with
the world in a straightforward manner consistent with the ideals of
democracy, while the Soviets were waging a different sort of cold war,
one that relied on deceit, propaganda, and clandestine violence. 21
Less than six months later, the National Security Council replaced
NSC 4-A with a second, more sweeping policy decision known as NSC
10/2, which granted the CIA still greater authority for clandestine war-
fare. NSC 10/2 created an entirely new government branch under the
CIA whose budget, personnel, and very existence was a state secret:
the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). In its first weeks of existence,
the new group was named the Office for Special Projects, but this title
was thought to be too revealing because the euphemism "special proj-
ects" had become associated with clandestine OSS activities during the
war. The name was therefore changed to Office of Policy Coordination,
although the organization was an operational group that had nothing to
do with policy or its coordination. 22 Frank Wisner, a brilliant, driven
40
SCIENCE OF COERCION
Wall Street lawyer who had played a prominent role in the OSS, became
its chief. 23
Administratively, the OPC was a division of the CIA, but it was
funded through the State Department and answered to that department's
policy planning chief George F. Kennan on policy matters. 24 In practice,
that meant that the dynamic Wisner enjoyed considerable autonomy for
his division. By 1952 Wisner's "office" employed about six thousand
personnel in forty-seven field stations in the United States and around
the world. The OPC's annual budget has never been officially made
public and so remains disputed among historians, with estimates running
from about $82 million annually in 1950 dollars to three times that
amount. 25 Virtually all of these funds were spent on "black" psycho-
logical warfare.
The NSC termed the OPC the United States' "Psychological Warfare
Organization." Thus the phrase ' 'psychological warfare" — with its con-
notation of media and persuasion, albeit of a hard-hitting sort — itself
became a euphemism to conceal covert activities that most governments
consider to be acts of war. As the OPC's charter put it, the agency's
tasks included "propaganda, economic warfare; preventative direct ac-
tion, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation
measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to un-
derground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberations [sic]
groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threat-
ened countries of the free world." 26 OPC simultaneously created a
specific branch for managing assassinations and kidnapping of "persons
whose interests were inimical" to the United States, as well as for
murdering double agents suspected of betraying U.S. intelligence agen-
27
cies.
William Corson, a career intelligence officer who investigated the
origins of the OPC for a 1976 U.S. Senate inquiry, captured the same
concepts in more informal — but perhaps more enlightening — terms:
The intelligence community's reaction to the NSCs apparently unani-
mous endorsement and support of the "dirty tricks" authorizations was
swift. In their view no holds were barred. The NSC 10/2 decision was
broadly interpreted to mean that not only the President but all the guys
on the top had said to put on the brass knuckles and go to work. As
word of NSC 10/2 trickled down to the working staffs in the intelligence
"The Social Scientists Make a Huge Contribution"
41
community, it was translated to mean that a declaration of war had been
issued with equal if not more force than if the Congress had so decided. 28
In this context the phrase "psychological warfare" enjoyed multi-
layered, often contradictory meanings, depending upon the degree to
which the people using the phrase and their audience had been initiated
into this officially nonexistent aspect of U.S. policy. For the public,
the term seems to have implied basically overt, hard-hitting propaganda
and other mass media activities. For the national security cognoscenti
and for psychological warfare contractors, the same phrase extended to
selected use of violence — but denning exactly how much violence was
often sidestepped, even in top-secret records. Meanwhile, the U.S.
government systematically denied responsibility for any specific act of
violence, typically denouncing news reports of U.S. -sponsored clan-
destine operations as fabrications of communist propagandists. 29 In this
way, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations mobilized broad con-
stituencies to support U.S. psychological warfare programs — including
constituencies among social scientists and other academics — while at
the same time evading accountability for what was actually taking place.
4
Academic Advocates
Looked at with the benefit of hindsight and what came to light during
the Watergate-related investigations, the pages of Public Opinion Quar-
terly during the first decade after World War II illustrate several im-
portant features of the alliance that emerged after 1945 between a select
group of academic entrepreneurs and the government's psychological
warfare agencies. POQ had been founded in 1937 at Princeton Uni-
versity by DeWitt Poole, who was at that time on sabbatical from the
U.S. State Department division responsible for eastern European affairs.
POQ's work during the postwar years reflects Poole's concerns, re-
vealing at least three characteristics of U.S. propaganda and covert
operations. First, many of the journal's articles explicitly discussed
American experience in psychological warfare, presented relevant re-
search results, or advocated expanded U.S. programs of this type. POQ
articles exhibiting this relatively unambiguous characteristic were often
indexed under "psychological warfare" or "propaganda," or both, in
POQ's annual index. 1
Second and usually more subtly, a substantial number of articles
targeted POQ's own audience for persuasion concerning the appropri-
ateness of U.S. intervention abroad, the emerging cold war, and the
proper role of mass communication research professionals in those ef-
forts. Such articles frequently took the form of extended reviews of
books concerning foreign affairs. 2
Finally, a number of the journal's editors and contributors maintained
unusually close relations with the clandestine or "denied" side of the
U.S. government's psychological warfare effort at the Department of
Academic Advocates
43
State, CIA, and the armed services. In fact, at least one-third of POQ's
editorial board can be identified today as financially dependent upon
psychological warfare contracting. 3
POQ's explicit articles concerning psychological warfare can be read-
ily identified by their language and their themes. For example, during
1945 POQ published a report on the use of polling techniques to obtain
military intelligence on the island of Saipan, 4 a review of the work of
the principal U.S. domestic propaganda agency, the OWI; 5 a discussion
of the use of opinion polls among Japanese nationals to determine
effective propaganda themes; 6 and an argument in favor of intensifying
U.S. propaganda against communism in Latin America. 7 A similar
pattern continued for the remainder of the decade. A complete list of
POQ's explicit articles concerning psychological warfare would become
tedious, but representative examples published between 1945 and 1949
include two further studies of the OWI, 8 seven reports on the dynamics
of German civilian and military morale during World War II and on
Allied attempts to influence it, 9 three case studies of the use of leaflets
and postcards as propaganda vehicles, 10 six essays concerning morale
and training programs among U.S. troops," at least twelve reviews of
books on wartime propaganda and psychological warfare, 12 and more
than fifteen studies on various aspects of U.S. and Soviet propaganda
and psychological warfare campaigns. 13
Despite the volume of this material, and the frequent use of the terms
"propaganda" and "psychological warfare" in POQ's headlines and
texts, the journal's authors were unable to arrive at any clear definition
of exactly what was meant by those words. Terms like communication,
propaganda, and psychological warfare meant quite different things to
different people, even among experts in the field.
This was illustrated in Leo Crespi's 1946 review of Propaganda,
Communication and Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Reference
Guide, by Bruce Lannes Smith, Harold Lasswell, and Ralph Casey.
Crespi took Lasswell to task for arguing that "propaganda is language
aimed at large masses ... to influence mass attitudes on controversial
issues," whereas "education," in the Lasswellian view, is "primarily
concerned with transmitting skill or insight, not attitude." As Crespi
saw it, in contrast, any "socially enlightened educator" would agree
that "a particular concern of education is to 'influence mass attitudes
on controversial topics.' . . . [Lasswells] attempt at a distinction
fails." 14 Thus, while propaganda and psychological warfare were fre-
44
SCIENCE OF COERCION
quent topics of discussion, there remained considerable dispute among
leaders in the field over exactly what those terms meant and how they
might be distinguished from any other form of communication.
To carry the conundrum a step further, a few issues later a second
leading expert, Hans Speier of the RAND Corporation, presented an
extended discussion of "The Future of Psychological Warfare" in which
he used the terms "propaganda" and "psychological warfare" inter-
changeably throughout. 15 Similarly, in POQ's published annual index,
the titles listed under index entry terms "propaganda" and "psycho-
logical warfare" overlap in such idiosyncratic ways as to offer few
meaningful guidelines for distinguishing one from the other. 16
Despite the journal's avoidance of a clear-cut definition, it is possible
to identify the dominant arguments put forward concerning psycholog-
ical warfare during the first five years after World War II. These can
be most conveniently summarized through review of two theoretical
articles on the topic by Donald McGranahan and Hans Speier, respec-
tively. McGranahan's "U.S. Psychological Warfare Policy," published
in the form of an extended letter to the editor in the fall 1946 issue, 17
focused on how best to use what was known about the social-
psychological and anthropological characteristics of a given population
when choosing coercive tactics for use against that population. This
was the ' 'relation of our psychological intelligence to our psychological
warfare policy," as McGranahan put it. Briefly, he argued that U.S.
psychological warfare tactics up to that time had suffered from an
"advertising complex." Too much stress had been put on the principles
of commercial advertising and public relations, where an advocate was
said to be "careful not to offend the public or any important segment
of it. [His] interest is in the broadest mass audience and the lowest
common denominator." Even during World War II, the United States
had been too reluctant to directly criticize Hitler in its broadcasts to
Germany, he contended, because once having learned that many German
soldiers remained loyal to Hitler, the United States was concerned that
offending their faith might encourage them to fight all the harder. 18
McGranahan contended that a "frontal attack" on rival ideologies
would be more effective. "Evangelical propaganda" involving direct
attacks on paganism had effectively spread Christianity, he argued, and
the Soviet technique of "violent attacks [on rival] leadership, as well
as on [its] political system," had mobilized internal discontent in the
populations the Soviets had targeted. The United States should exploit
Academic Advocates
45
these insights through propaganda and other psychological warfare tech-
niques "adapted to [its] own particular objectives and based upon our
democratic philosophy of life." In sum, U.S. psychological warfare
should be campaigns of active subversion against targeted states. If
U.S. programs were to be effective, they should be aimed primarily at
indigenous, discontented groups who could be convinced to risk every-
thing to attack a rival's government; they should only secondarily appeal
to the "lowest common denominator" of the target's populations. 19
McGranahan's argument resonated well with some American tradi-
tions and would seem to be easily applicable to wartime situations in
which the United States was unambiguously dedicated to the defeat of
a rival regime. But it begged the more difficult questions raised by
postwar psychological warfare operations: Are these "revolutionary"
tactics appropriate for use against governments with which the United
States is officially at peace? And, considering that the sponsorship of
subversion campaigns must frequently be secret in order for them to be
successful, how exactly is a democratic society to determine which
campaigns are appropriate and how far they are to be carried?
Hans Speier's article on "The Future of Psychological Warfare"
appeared as the lead article in the spring 1948 issue. The historical
context is important here. President Truman had "drawn the line"
against popular revolutions in Greece and Turkey a year previously,
and U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations were headed for — but had not yet
reached — the watershed symbolized by the Berlin crisis of 1948. Inside
the U.S. government, the National Security Council had in December
1947 secretly passed NSC 4 and NSC 4-A, the official authorization
for campaigns of clandestine propaganda, sabotage, and subversion.
Among the most important sponsors of NSC 4 and NSC 4-A within the
government was Frank Wisner, who was in December 1947 chief of
the Occupied Areas Division at the State Department, and who would
a few months later be appointed chief of OPC, the clandestine warfare
agency. Wisner's second in command at State during his effort to secure
passage of NSC 4-A was Hans Speier. 20
By the time Speier's article appeared that spring, he had left the
government and had taken a temporary roost at the New School for
Social Research in New York. POQ presented his essay to its readers
as that of a private scholar rather than that of a government official.
Nevertheless, Speier's commentary clearly was born at least in part out
of his government work, where he had specialized in the sociology and
46
SCIENCE OF COERCION
social psychology of reeducating populations in the U.S. occupation
zone of Germany and Austria. In his POQ article, Speier argued that
the United States had permitted its psychological warfare weapons to
"fall into desuetude" since 1945 and should now refurbish them. Spe-
cialists in the field had never received the support within the government
that they deserved, he contended, in large part because their previous
efforts had been put together on an ad hoc basis after World War II
had already begun. This time around, however, "the United States
cannot afford to persist in its indifference toward political and psycho-
logical warfare," nor would it be possible to "rely on improvisation
once more if it should be impossible to avoid war." 21 As Speier saw
it, U.S. clandestine subversion campaigns against the Soviet Union and
rebel nationalist groups in developing countries should be extended and
escalated.
He contended that the U.S. government should prepare immediately
to "impos[e] martial law [in the United States] to guard against de-
featism, demoralization and disorder," if that proved necessary. More
urgent in Speier's mind, however, was activation of a strong "offen-
sive" program designed to overthrow rival regimes. "Subversion [is
the] aim of strategic propaganda," Speier wrote. "The United States
. . . can wage sincere political subversion propaganda against the dic-
tatorial Soviet regime, particularly in the political realm. . . . Planning
and preparation for strategic propaganda in a future war must begin
now." 22
Thus by the end of the 1940s Speier, McGranahan, and other prom-
inent communication research specialists used the pages of POQ to call
on U.S. security agencies to employ state-of-the-art techniques to fa-
cilitate the overthrow of governments of selected foreign countries in
a "future" war — the preparations for which should begin immediately.
Speier's program included coercive measures, even the imposition of
martial law, to ensure that the U.S. population cooperated. Although
Speier presented his argument in the form of a proposal, it is today
known from the declassified records of the National Security Council
that many of the measures he recommended were in fact actually under
way at the time his article appeared. 23
Turning to the second and more subtle manifestation of psychological
warfare themes in Public Opinion Quarterly, many POQ articles tar-
geted the journal's own audience for persuasion concerning U.S. policy
on cold war operations in contested countries worldwide and on the
Academic Advocates
47
proper role of mass communication research professionals in that effort.
These texts did not usually advocate psychological warfare campaigns
in the sense that McGranahan and Speier did, but instead framed their
discussion in such a way as to reinforce the foreign policy initiatives
and propaganda themes of the powerful "internationalist" faction within
the U.S. government. As I noted earlier, this phenomenon can be seen
in the extensive play POQ gave to reviews of books on various aspects
of foreign affairs that strongly demonstrated the reviewer's (and pre-
sumably the editors') support for the foreign policy initiatives of the
Truman administration — even when the books had little meaningful
relationship to the study of public opinion. Between the winters of 1946
and 1947, for example, POQ published twenty-seven book reviews. Of
these, six (22 percent) concerned books on the Soviet Union, each of
which was a general-interest work. All of them were reviewed by a
single author, Warren Walsh, who used each of his commentaries to
conclude that cold war between East and West was necessary, and that
the conflict had been instigated by the Soviets. 24 None of Walsh's
reviews dealt with public opinion or communication research, other
than in the banal sense that any political writing involves public opinion
in some fashion.
The point here is not the merit of Walsh's opinions. Rather, it is the
journal's willingness to propagate a monochromatic picture of issues
that were among the most controversial of the day. The use of the single
author and the single point of view suggests that the magazine did
indeed have an editorial "line" on East-West relations, and that it did
not welcome contrary points of view.
The journal's reporting on other international issues shows a similar
trend. POQ's coverage of public opinion polling in Italy, for example,
was initiated in spring 1947 with a study by P. Luzzatto Fegiz, "Italian
Public Opinion," 25 which focused on the possible electoral strength of
Italy's Communist party (CPI). Fegiz outlined a method he had devel-
oped that purportedly could determine the degree of communist sym-
pathy among Italian voters and concluded that Italy might soon "become
an integrant [sic] part of Russian-dominated Eastern Europe." This
concern was followed up in a second feature article in winter 1947,
"The Prospects of Italian Democracy" by Felix Oppenheim, who ex-
pressed many of the same themes, 26 and in two later POQ articles on
Italian public opinion published in 1949 and 1950 that reported on the
propaganda techniques used during the 1948 election campaign. 27
48
SCIENCE OF COERCION
Again, some historical background is appropriate. The CPI was dur-
ing the late 1940s probably the most powerful communist organization
in western Europe. The Truman administration's National Security
Council was deeply concerned that Italian voters might democratically
elect a socialist-communist coalition government, a move that the NSC
regarded as putting Italy behind the Iron Curtain. NSC 4 and NSC 4-
A's first clandestine psychological warfare project became a no-holds-
barred campaign to ensure the CPI's defeat in the 1948 election, in-
cluding multimillion-dollar, "deniable" propaganda projects aimed at
both Italian and American audiences. 28
In reporting on Italy, POQ's authors consistently articulated the main
psychological warfare themes of the U.S. government in articles that
were ostensibly about Italy, rather than about psychological warfare as
such. The point once again is not the merit of POQ's position, nor is
it necessary to assume that POQ was a willing participant in the gov-
ernment's effort to mold U.S. public opinion on the Italian elections.
What is apparent on its face, however, is that the academic journal
promoted a single point of view on these political issues, and that it
did not air contrary views.
Opposition to this "propagandistic" aspect (as some might call it)
of POQ's content was rare, but it did take place. One protest came
from Alfred McClung Lee, who wrote to the editors of the journal in
the spring of 1947 criticizing George Counts' 1946 article, "Soviet
Version of American History." 29 Lee contended that Counts' work had
one-sidedly indicted Soviet writers for distorting U.S. history in their
magazines, without recognizing that many U.S. authors also twisted
Soviet history when they considered it useful. Lee's note was to be the
last published protest to the politicization of POQ for more than a
decade. There appears to have been passive resistance among some
POQ readers to the stress the journal placed on ideologically charged
foreign political news, however. Intriguingly, a 1948 survey of POQ
readers found that 20 percent of the respondents preferred that "less
attention [in the journal] be given to descriptions of popular attitudes
abroad," and that POQ should instead place greater emphasis on sci-
entific methodology, case histories of publicity campaigns, and research
into the effects of publicity. 30
The third expression of psychological warfare themes in POQ and
similar academic literature during the first years after World War II can
be seen in the unusually close liaison that some of the journal's authors
Academic Advocates
49
and editors maintained with clandestine psychological warfare projects
at the CIA, the armed services, and the Department of State. This can
be found in both manifest and veiled form in many articles appearing
in the journal, and in the composition of POQ's editorial board. Hans
Speier's emergence as a prominent "private" advocate of expanded
psychological warfare shortly after his work with Frank Wisner at the
Occupied Areas Division at the State Department, discussed previously,
is one example of an informal link between a prominent POQ author
and the government's clandestine warfare programs.
This phenomenon became considerably more widespread, however,
though rarely easy to identify. A good example of latent linkages can
be seen in Frederick W. Williams' 1945 article "Regional Attitudes on
International Cooperation." 31 On a manifest level, Williams' study sim-
ply reports data gathered by the American Institute of Public Opinion
and the Office of Public Opinion Research at Princeton during the winter
of 1944-45 concerning popular attitudes on the U.S. role in international
affairs, broken out by geographic region of the country. Williams uses
the data to strongly advocate "making the United States more inter-
national-minded," as POQ described it. 32
In the decades since the article first appeared, it has become clear
that Williams' data had been collected in an ongoing clandestine intel-
ligence program underwritten by Listerine heir Gerard Lambert on be-
half of the Roosevelt administration. The U.S. Congress had in those
years barred the expenditure of government funds on most types of
attitude surveys of U.S. voters, arguing that it was the Congress' job
under the Constitution to represent "public opinion." Congress' con-
cern was in part political, because FDR used rival sources of information
on public opinion to advance controversial policies, not least of which
was the president's drive toward an "internationalist" foreign policy.
Despite the congressional strictures, the White House hired Hadley
Cantril and Lloyd Free for "government intelligence work," as Jean
Converse puts it, including clandestine intelligence collection abroad
and public opinion surveys in the United States. Cantril and Free in
turn engaged Frederick Williams and the American Institute of Public
Opinion as field staff for research on behalf of the administration. 33
Meanwhile, Public Opinion Quarterly's board of editors included a
substantial number of men who were deeply involved in U.S. govern-
ment psychological warfare research or operations, several of whom
were largely dependent on government funding for their livelihood. The
50
SCIENCE OF COERCION
journal's editorial advisory board during the late 1940s, for example,
was made up of twenty-five to thirty individuals noted for their contri-
butions to public opinion studies and mass communication research.
Among those on the board with readily identifiable dependencies on
government psychological warfare contracting were Hadley Cantril,
Harold Lasswell, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Rensis Likert, whose role as
government contractors are documented in Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 of
this study. They were joined on the POQ board by DeWitt Poole, who
later became president of the CIA's largest single propaganda effort of
the era, the National Committee for a Free Europe. 34 Another prominent
board member was CBS executive Frank Stanton, also a longtime di-
rector of both Radio Free Europe and the Free Europe Fund, a CIA-
financed organization established to conduct political advertising cam-
paigns in the United States and to launder CIA funds destined for Poole's
National Committee for a Free Europe. 35 The journal's editor during
1946 and 1947 was Lloyd Free, a wartime secret agent on behalf of
the Roosevelt administration who some years later was destined to share
a million-dollar CIA research grant with Hadley Cantril. 36
This pattern appears to have been repeated at several other important
academic journals of sociology and social psychology of the era, al-
though quantitative studies of their content remain to be done. The
American Sociological Review (ASR), published by the American So-
ciological Society, overlapped so frequently in its officers and editorial
panels with those of Public Opinion Quarterly and its publisher, the
American Association for Public Opinion Research, that board members
sometimes joked that they were unsure which meetings they were at-
tending. 37 While ASR published articles about a considerably broader
range of sociological subjects than did POQ, the ASR articles and book
reviews concerning communication remained confined to a group of
fewer than a dozen authors who were simultaneously the dominant
voices in POQ. The range of views concerning communication and its
role in society remained similarly circumscribed.
Further, an informal comparison of articles published during the
1950s concerning mass communication and public opinion in POQ and
the prestigious American Journal of Sociology (AJS) shows that its
articles in this field were just as rooted in psychological warfare contracts
as were those appearing in POQ. The 1949-50 volume of AJS, for
example, featured eight articles on various aspects of mass communi-
cation and public opinion. At least four of these stemmed directly or
Academic Advocates
51
indirectly from ongoing psychological warfare projects, including work
by Hans Speier and Herbert Goldhamer (both of RAND Corp.), Samuel
Stouffer (from the American Soldier project), and Leo Lowenthal (then
the director of research for the Voice of America, whose political od-
yssey is discussed in Chapter 6). 38
In sum, the data show that Public Opinion Quarterly — and perhaps
other contemporary academic journals as well — exhibited at least three
important characteristics that linked the publication with the U.S. gov-
ernment's psychological warfare effort during the first decade after
World War II. First, POQ became an important advocate for U.S.
propaganda and psychological warfare projects of the period, frequently
publishing case studies, research reports, and polemics in favor of ex-
panded psychological operations. Second and more subtly, many POQ
articles articulated U.S. propaganda themes on topics other than psy-
chological warfare itself. Examples include the magazine's editorial line
on U.S. -Soviet relations and on the Italian election of 1948.
Finally, data suggest that some members of the journal's editorial
board and certain of the authors maintained an unusually close liaison
with the clandestine propaganda and intelligence operations of the day.
The traces of these relationships can be found in several articles men-
tioned in this chapter and in the composition of POQ's editorial board,
at least one member of which — POQ's founder DeWitt Poole — was a
full-time executive of a major propaganda project organized and fi-
nanced by the CIA.
This influence over the editorial board and editorial content of the
field's most prestigious academic journal was only a symptom of a
deeper and more organic bond that is discussed in the next chapter.
Money became one of the most important links between the emerging
field of mass communication studies and U.S. military, intelligence,
and propaganda agencies. Precise economic figures cannot be deter-
mined because of the lack of consistent reporting from the government,
the continued classification of some projects, and the loss of data over
the years. Even so, the overall trend is clear.
"The primary nexus between government and social science is an
economic one," write Albert Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford of the
Bureau of Social Science Research. It is "so pervasive as to make any
crisis of relations with the government a crisis for social science as a
whole." 39
5
Outposts of the Government
For the first decade after 1945 — which is to say, the decade in which
communication studies crystallized into a distinct academic field, com-
plete with colleges, graduate degrees, and so on — U.S. military, pro-
paganda, and intelligence agencies provided the large majority of all
project funding for the field. The earliest cumulative data concerning
government funding of social science is provided by the National Sci-
ence Foundation (NSF) in 1952; that report shows that over 96 percent
of all reported federal funding for social science at that time was drawn
from the U. S. military. The remaining 4 percent of government funding
was divided about equally between conventional civilian agencies (De-
partment of Labor, Department of the Interior) and civilian agencies
with clear national security missions (such as the Federal Civil Defense
Administration and the Office of Intelligence and Research at the State
Department). Social science funding rooted in national security missions
totaled $12.27 million that year, the NSF reported, while comparable
"civilian" funding totaled only $280,000.'
This extreme skew in favor of national security-oriented social sci-
ence studies appears to have attenuated during the course of the 1950s,
even as overall academic dependency on the federal government in-
creased. Directly comparable funding data for the late 1950s are not
available due to changes in the National Science Foundation's data
collection and reporting, but the available data indicate that annual
research obligations by national security agencies (i.e., Department of
Defense, civil defense, U.S. Information Agency [USIA]) for the social
sciences increased slightly over the decade, to $13.9 million in 1959.
Outposts of the Government
53
Meanwhile, civilian funding (principally from the departments of Ag-
riculture and Health, Education and Welfare) grew quite sharply over
the same time to $41.4 million. The apparent military-civilian balance
in the 1959 figures cannot be taken at face value, however, because a
significant amount of security-oriented social science contracting took
place under the aegis of the National Advisory Commission on Aero-
nautics in the wake of the Soviet Sputnik launch. This very large research
budget — totaling more than twice as much as all other social science
funding combined — is not broken out into categories that permit direct
comparison to the 1952 data. 2
Be that as it may, to the extent that social science was supported by
the U.S. government during the 1950s, that support was usually tied
to national security missions, especially during the first years of the
decade. This was particularly true of mass communication studies. A
close review of Public Opinion Quarterly, the American Journal of
Sociology, American Psychologist, and other academic literature pub-
lished between 1945 and 1955 reveals several dozen medium- to large-
scale projects funded by the Office of Naval Research, Air Force, Army,
CIA, and USIA. The only comparable "civilian" study appears to have
been a 1950 Department of Agriculture survey of the effects of television
on dressmakers — one of the earliest such studies of television effects —
that was apparently never written up for academic journals. The Ag-
riculture Department, Tennessee Valley Authority, and other civilian
agencies also supported a limited number of consumer preference opin-
ion surveys, Harry Alpert reported in 1952. 3 But the National Science
Foundation data show that the scale of such projects was quite small
compared to the ongoing military, intelligence, and propaganda re-
search.
At least a half-dozen of the most important centers of U.S. com-
munication research depended for their survival on funding from a
handful of national security agencies. Their reliance on psychological
wafare money was so extensive as to suggest that the crystallization of
mass communications studies into a distinct scholarly field might not
have come about during the 1950s without substantial military, CIA,
and USIA intervention.
Major beneficiaries included the Bureau of Applied Social Research,
the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, the
National Opinion Research Center, the Bureau of Social Science Re-
search, the RAND Corporation, and the Center for International Studies
54
SCIENCE OF COERCION
at MIT. Moreover, this list must be regarded as preliminary at this time.
Several of the more important academics engaged in mass communi-
cation studies became activist supporters of U.S. psychological warfare
projects and derived part of their income from participation in such
efforts over a period of at least two decades. This was particularly true
of Wilbur Schramm, who is widely credited as the single most important
definer of U.S. mass communication studies of his day. These scholars
and the organizations they were affiliated with became central to the
elaboration and to the practical social power of what has come to be
known as the dominant paradigm of U.S. mass communication research
during the 1950s.
The Survey Research Center (SRC) at the University of Michigan
(today known as the Institute for Social Research [ISR]), for example,
was established by Rensis Likert in the summer of 1946 using a number
of the personnel who had served under Likert in the Program Surveys
operation during the war. The "SRC functioned during its first year as
something of an outpost of the federal government," writes Jean Con-
verse in Survey Research in the United States. 4 Major early contracts
included a ten-year grant from the Office of Naval Research for studies
of the psychological aspects of morale, leadership, and control of large
organizations, and a series of contracts for surveys of Americans' at-
titudes on economics for the Federal Reserve Board, which was in those
early postwar days deeply concerned about the potential for a renewed
1930s-style depression and social upheaval as veterans returned to the
civilian work force. 5 Early SRC/ISR research with strategic intelligence
applications included U.S. Air Force-funded interview studies of Soviet
defectors and refugees. The object of that study was twofold: first,
identification of social-psychological attributes of the Soviet population
that could be exploited in U.S. propaganda, and second, collection of
intelligence on military and economic centers inside the Soviet Union
to target for atomic attack in the event of war. 6
SRC archival records show that federal contracts contributed 99 per-
cent of SRC revenues during the organization's first full year (1947)
and well over 50 percent of SRC/ISR revenues during its first five years
of operation. Angus Campbell, who later became director of the insti-
tution, has reflected that had the federal funding been canceled during
this period, the SRC/ISR "probably would not have survived." 7
At the National Opinion Research Center, perhaps the most liberal
and reform-minded of the early centers of survey research, about 90
Outposts of the Government
55
percent of the organization's work during the war years was made up
of contracts from the Office of War Information, the government's
principal monitor of civilian morale. This backing was "probably crit-
ical in making [NORC's] national capacity [for conducting surveys]
viable," Converse writes. 8 Congress canceled the OWI project in 1944,
but the NORC field studies of civilian morale and attitudes were con-
tinued under a series of secret, "emergency" contracts with the De-
partment of State. That arrangement became institutionalized, and it
provided a survey vehicle onto which NORC later marketed "piggy-
back" questions for commercial customers.
It was probably illegal for the State Department (though not for
NORC) to enter these contracts, and that led to an unpleasant scandal
when Congress uncovered the continuing "emergency" surveys four-
teen years later in 1958. 9 The State Department is prohibited by statute
from spending funds to influence Congress, and the NORC surveys had
indeed been put to that use by the department. NORC's archives indicate
that without the State Department contract during the institution's first
decade, the organization would probably have found it impossible to
maintain a national field survey staff, which was essential to NORC's
academic and commercial work and for the group's economic survival. 10
A second noteworthy NORC contract during the center's first decade
was a study for the U.S. Army Chemical Corps of individual and group
responses to "community disasters," in which natural disasters such
as earthquakes and tornadoes were used as analogues to model responses
to attacks with chemical weapons." In time, NORC undertook a related
series of disaster studies that became the U.S. government's main data
base for evaluating the psychological effects of nuclear war. 12
Funding for the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia
University appears to have been more diversified. BASR records from
its first years are sketchy, but Converse concludes that approximately
50 percent of BASR's budget from 1941 to 1946 stemmed from com-
mercial work such as readership studies for Time and Life magazines
and a variety of public opinion surveys for nonprofit organizations.
Other funds stemmed from a major Rockefeller Foundation grant and,
to a much lesser degree, from Columbia University. 13
By 1949, the BASR was deeply in debt to Columbia University and
lacked a cushion of operating funds with which to cover project expenses
while waiting for clients to make payments. The cash flow problem
was sufficiently severe that Lazarsfeld speculated in fundraising appeals
56
SCIENCE OF COERCION
that BASR would be forced to close its doors if help was not forth-
coming.
By the end of that year, however, BASR's Kingsley Davis won new
military and intelligence contracts that substantially improved BASR's
finances. By fiscal year 1950-51, BASR's annual budget had reached
a new high, some 75 percent of which consisted of contracts with U.S.
military and propaganda agencies. 14 Major federally funded BASR proj-
ects of the period included two U.S. Air Force studies for intelligence
gathering about urban social dynamics abroad, a large project for the
Office of Naval Research, and a multiyear contract with the Voice of
America for public opinion surveys in the Middle East. 15 BASR's de-
pendence on federal money may in fact have been even higher, because
some ostensibly "private" studies were actually subcontracts from pri-
vate institutions of projects that had originated in the federal govern-
ment. One example of this is technical consultation on interviewing and
survey techniques by BASR's Lee Wiggins and Dean Manheimer for
surveys of Soviet emigres in Europe. Harvard's Russian Research Center
was the prime contractor; funding for that project was drawn primarily
from the U.S. Air Force and the CIA. 16
The Voice of America project began in September 1950 with BASR
as the prime contractor; Charles Glock organized the day-to-day work.
Extensive, methodologically ambitious surveys were conducted in Iran,
Turkey, Egypt, and four other Middle Eastern countries, each of which
was a major target of U.S. psychological warfare efforts of the period. 17
At least two of the countries, Iran and Egypt, experienced CIA-
supported coups d'etat while the study was under way. 18
Lazarsfeld helped compose the survey questions, which were even-
tually asked by native-language researchers in the field. These included
inquiries such as:
97a. How do you feel about the behavior of Russia in world affairs?
How about its behavior towards [your] country? (Probe aiso for changes.)
How long have you felt that way?
42. If you were put in charge of a radio station, what kinds of programs
would you like to put on? (Probe here.) 19
BASR arranged for translation, tabulation, and analysis of about two
thousand interviews and eventually delivered a confidential report to
Outposts of the Government
57
the Voice of America designed to guide U.S. propaganda broadcasts
in the region. Nonclassified studies of some of the same data were
publicized through Sociometry, Public Opinion Quarterly, and other
academic journals. These included reports on purported "Political
Extremists in Iran" by Benjamin Ringer and David Sills and a com-
parative report on communications and public opinion in four Arab
countries by Elihu Katz and Patricia Kendall. 20
Military and Foundation Networks
This dependency of three of the United States' most important centers
of communication and public opinion research on contracts with military
and propaganda agencies became but one skein in a broader, more
complex, and more enveloping web of relationships. The flow of money
to favored federal contractors moved through networks of personal con-
tacts, friends, and colleagues such as those documented in the Clausen
study of academic networks discussed earlier. These informal associ-
ations provided an important new dimension to the social and scientific
impact of government funding patterns.
Their impact can be demonstrated in the interservice Committee on
Human Resources, which the Department of Defense established in
1947 to coordinate all U.S. military spending on social psychology,
sociology, and the social sciences, including communication studies. 21
The Defense Department and a narrow group of influential academic
entrepreneurs employed the committee as a confidential contact point
for government-academic networking. In 1949, its chairman was Don-
ald Marquis (University of Michigan and president of the American
Psychological Association). He was aided by committee members Wil-
liam C. Menninger (Menninger Foundation, a major military contractor
for studies of "combat fatigue" and related forms of psychological
collapse), Carroll Shartle (then at Ohio State University and later chief
of the Psychology and Social Science Division of the Office of the
Secretary of Defense), and Samuel Stouffer (Harvard). Civilian deputies
included Henry Brosin (University of Chicago), Walter Hunter (Brown
University), and Frederick Stephan (Princeton), while professional Staff
included committee executive director Raymond Bowers (later chief of
the Bureau of Social Science Research [BSSR]), and his aides Dwight
58
SCIENCE OF COERCION
Chapman and Henry Odbert. Psychologist Lyle Lanier (New York Uni-
versity) succeeded Bowers as exective director later that year. 22
The committee did not allocate funds, but it was responsible for
oversight of the social science portion of the military budget, recom-
mended projects, and signed off on major research initiatives. The
budget, papers, and meeting notes of the group were classified. In 1949,
the committee was responsible for oversight of about $7.5 million in
social science research funds — by far the largest single source of funding
of the day for this field of inquiry. 23
The Committee on Human Resources was divided into four panels,
each of which specialized in a particular aspect of social science. The
panel on Human Relations and Morale is of most interest here; it oversaw
most U.S. military psychological warfare research and had the most
direct impact on funding for communication studies. Other panels were
Psychophysiology (studying primarily human engineering of high-
technology weapons, motor skill development, etc.), Personnel and
Training (developing psychological testing of recruits, examining the
sociology of leadership and groups, etc.), and Manpower (research into
the personnel requirements and mobilization of the armed forces). 24
The composition of the panel on Human Relations and Morale illus-
trates the continuing pattern of tight, inbred relationships in psycho-
logical warfare matters among a handful of academic specialists in
communication and the military establishment. It also raises a distinct
possibility of conflict of interest among the scholars responsible for
oversight of government programs, because the U.S. government was
dependent on expert advice on communication research from scholars
who were themselves among the primary beneficiaries of the programs
they were overseeing. The Human Relations panel chair was psychol-
ogist Charles Dollard, who was president of the Carnegie Corporation,
trustee of the RAND Corporation, and a veteran of Stouffer's World
War II Research Branch team. Panel members included Hans Speier
(who by then was based at the RAND Corporation, where he eventually
became director of social science research. 25 Alexander Leighton (of
Cornell and later Harvard, whose work during the late 1940s depended
largely on the records of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in Japan, 26
and Carl Hovland (of Yale, whose most influential work, Experiments
in Mass Communications [1949], required exclusive access to the war-
time records of Stouffer's Research Branch of the army). 27
A list of the panel's paid consultants reads like a who's who of
Outposts of the Government
59
mainstream U.S. communication studies of the period. According to a
December 1948 report in the American Psychologist, "special con-
sultants for expert advice" 28 included Harry Alpert (of Yale and BASR),
Kingsley Davis (newly appointed director of BASR, whose role in
obtaining government contracts to rescue BASR was discussed earlier),
John Gardner (Carnegie Corporation and later secretary of health, ed-
ucation and welfare during the Johnson administration), Harold Lass well
(Yale), Rensis Likert (director of the Institute for Social Research), and
Elmo Wilson (of International Research Associates, a major contractor
of U.S. government overseas public opinion research). 29
The roles of panel chair Charles Dollard and consultant John Gardner
reveal the complexity of the web of financial and personal relationships
among selected communication scholars and the federal government.
Dollard was the president of the Carnegie Corporation; Gardner was a
senior Carnegie executive. Both were personally involved in the funding
and oversight of the ostensibly private American Soldier studies by
Samuel Stouffer, Carl Hovland, Leonard Cottrell, and others, and in
the sponsorship of the Russian Research Project at Harvard, which was
a joint Carnegie-U.S. Air Force-CIA enterprise that employed Ray-
mond Bauer, Alex Inkeles, and others in communication studies fo-
cusing on the Soviet Union. 30 (The Harvard project was the contractor
for the ISR and BASR consultancies on studies of Soviet refugees
discussed a moment ago.)
Thus Carnegie's Dollard was chairing and Carnegie's Gardner was
advising the Department of Defense's primary committee on the sci-
entific aspects of psychological warfare at a time when two of Carnegie's
most important projects were dependent upon Department of Defense
cooperation for funding, for exclusive access to data, and for research
subjects. At least two of the senior academics on the same committee
(Stouffer and Hovland) meanwhile depended in some degree on Dollard
and Gardner's goodwill and money for their privileged position in the
world of scholarship, for it was the Carnegie executives who controlled
the purse strings of the funds on which Stouffer and Hovland relied.
At a minimum, this establishes that the social science programs at
Carnegie and the Department of Defense were not conducted in isolation
from one another. The substantial overlap of key personnel, funding
priorities, and data sources strongly suggests that the two programs
were in reality coordinated and complementary to one another, at least
insofar as the two organizations shared similar conceptions concerning
60
SCIENCE OF COERCION
the role of the social sciences in national security research. Between
them, the Carnegie Corporation and the overlapping government ov-
ersight committee exercised control (or substantial influence) over the
large majority of both public and private funds for academic mass
communication studies in the United States during the late 1940s and
early 1950s, particularly over funding for the large, higher-profile proj-
ects that often make or break academic careers in the United States.
This informal network of scholars and managers was quite conscious
of its role as an economic and political power broker within the academic
community. Carnegie's John Gardner discussed this in a 1987 interview
with Charles O'Connell, who was studying the origins of Harvard's
Russian Research Center. Asked about the sociometry of post-World
War II social science, Gardner replied that he was involved in at least
four important "networks" that interacted in making decisions con-
cerning major social science initiatives.
First of all, there was what I would call the behavior science network.
It was [Charles] Dollard and [Clyde] Kluckhohn and [Pendleton] Herring
and myself and Sam Stouffer and John Dollard [brother of Charles] at
Yale and Alex Leighton . . . who were deeply interested in the behavior
sciences and what they might do to illuminate some of the issues that
we were all interested in. ... The second network would be kind of a
Harvard network which would certainly be [James B.] Conant and [Dev-
ereux] Josephs [treasurer of the Council on Foreign Relations]. ... A
third network is kind of an international affairs network that grew out of
the war. . . . [A]ll of us folks came back [from the war] deeply committed
to think about international affairs and we met in various forums, worked
together, Ford, Rockefeller, ourselves, State Department. . . . 3I
The fourth network, Gardner continued, was built around Stouffer's
Research Branch in the army and included Charles Dollard, Frank Kep-
pel, Frederick Osborn (Stouffer's military superior during the war and
an active Carnegie trustee), and, of course, Stouffer himself.
Building on that point for a moment, it is useful to look briefly at
two other other important sources of social science funding during the
cold war years, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Russell Sage Foun-
dation. At the Rockefeller Foundation, social science funding was
headed for most of the 1950s by Leland DeVinney, Stouffer's coauthor
in the American Soldier series. 32 During his service, the Rockefeller
organization appears to have been used as a public front to conceal the
Outposts of the Government
61
source of at least $1 million in CIA funds for Hadley Cantril's Institute
for International Social Research, for reasons discussed in more detail
in a later chapter. 33 Nelson Rockefeller was himself among the most
prominent promoters of psychological operations, serving as Eisenhow-
er's principal adviser and strategist on the subject during 1954-55. 34
At Russell Sage, Leonard Cottrell served as the chief social psy-
chologist from 1951 to 1967; he was frequently a public spokesman for
the group and enjoyed substantial influence in the Sage Foundation's
decision making. 35 Cottrell simultaneously became chairman of the De-
fense Department's advisory group on psychological and unconventional
warfare (1952-53), member of the scientific advisory panel of the U.S.
Air Force (1954-58) and of the U.S. Army scientific advisory panel
(1956-58), and a longtime director of the Social Science Research
Council. 36 Cottrell was among the most enthusiastic boosters within the
social science community for psychological warfare operations, re-
peatedly calling for "a new club [among social scientists] dedicated to
the task of bringing the full capability of our disciplines to bear on this
field." 37
Taken as a whole, the evidence thus far shows that a very substantial
fraction of the funding for academic U.S. research into social psy-
chology and into many aspects of mass communication behavior during
the first fifteen years of the cold war was directly controlled or strongly
influenced by a small group of men who had enthusiastically supported
elite psychological operations as an instrument of foreign and domestic
policy since World War II. They exercised power through a series of
interlocking committees and commissions that linked the world of main-
stream academia with that of the U.S. military and intelligence com-
munities. Their networks were for the most part closed to outsiders;
their records and decision-making processes were often classified; and
in some instances the very existence of the coordinating bodies was a
•jo
state secret.
This was not a "conspiracy," in the hackneyed sense of that word.
It was rather precisely the type of "reference group" or informal net-
work that is so well known to sociologists. The informal authority
exercised by these networks reveals a distinctly centrist ideological bent:
Projects that advanced their conception of scientific progress and na-
tional security enjoyed a chance to gain the financial support that is
often a prerequisite to academic success. As is discussed more fully in
later chapters, projects that did not meet these criteria were often rel-
62
SCIENCE OF COERCION
egated to obscurity, and in some cases actively suppressed. One result
of this selective financing has been a detailed elaboration of those aspects
of scientific truth that tend to support the preconceptions of the agencies
that were paying the bill.
That the funding agencies and interlocking committees described
here helped underwrite the articulation of a particular paradigm of mass
communication studies of the period is self-evident; the elaboration of
paradigms is after all what research is. The more important question is
how great a contribution the government's psychological warfare proj-
ects made to the construction of the Zeitgeist of U.S. communication
studies. Clearly, other forces also made contributions, particularly the
commercially oriented projects stressed by Merton and Lazarsfeld and
the academic developments discussed by Delia and others. 39
The precise weight to be given to each of these factors in the evolution
of communication research will no doubt continue to be debated, be-
cause the surviving data are simply too sketchy to permit final answers.
Nevertheless, it is clear that the government's national security agencies
underwrote the economic survival of key communication research cen-
ters, funded large-scale research projects, and sustained networks of
sympathetic scholars who enjoyed decision-making power over the sub-
stantial majority of research funds for the field. The impact of these
elements on the "received knowledge" of the field of communication
research is explored in the next chapter.
As will become apparent, the "dominant paradigm" of the period
proved to be in substantial part a paradigm of dominance, in which the
appropriateness and inevitability of elite control of communication was
taken as a given. As a practical matter, the key academic journals of
the day demonstrated only a secondary interest in what communication
"is." Instead, they concentrated on how modern technology could be
used by elites to manage social change, extract political concessions,
or win purchasing decisions from targeted audiences. Their studies
emphasized those aspects of communication that were of greatest prac-
tical interest to the public and private agencies that were underwriting
most of the research. This orientation reduced the extraordinarily com-
plex, inherently communal social process of communication to simple
models based on the dynamics of transmission of persuasive — and, in
the final analysis, coercive — messages.
6
"Barrack and Trench Mates"
The threefold pattern of academic participation in psychological oper-
ations discussed earlier reached a new peak during the Korean War.
Prior to 1950, much of the discussion of psychological warfare in ac-
ademic journals had concerned World War II experiences or had focused
on what should be done to implement a "psychological" strategy in
the emerging cold war. From 1950 on, however, reports began to focus
on ongoing psychological operations and on new, military-financed
research into the effects of communication.
Many of the Korean War-era studies were presented by men who
would come to be remembered as among the most prominent mass
communication researchers of the day. In the end, it is they who wrote
the textbooks, enjoyed substantial government and private contracts,
served on the editorial boards of the key journals, and became the deans
and emeritus professors of the most influential schools of journalism
and mass communication in the United States. What can be seen here
is the process of construction of social networks whose specialty became
production of what was claimed to be "knowledge" about a particular
topic — in this case, "knowledge" about communication.
Shortly after the opening of the Korean War in 1950, the air force
sent Wilbur Schramm, John W. Riley, and Frederick Williams to Korea
to interview anticommunist refugees and to study U.S. psychological
operations. They prepared a classified study for the Air Force, a de-
classified, academic version for publication in POQ, and a mass market
booklet titled The Reds Take a City. 1 The popular Reds text provided
war and atrocity stories tailored to support the United Nations police
64
SCIENCE OF COERCION
action in Korea. It was eventually translated into several Asian and
European languages at U.S. government expense, and it became a
mainstay of "authoritative" accounts of the Korean conflict.
Meanwhile, summaries and interim reports concerning BASR's re-
search in the Middle East for the Voice of America appeared in POQ
on at least six occasions, one of which was a glowing review of Daniel
Lerner's book on the project, which was published in a POQ issue
edited by Lerner himself. 2 Methodological reports drawn from U.S. Air
Force, Army, and Navy research projects proliferated in the academic
literature in the wake of the Korean conflict, 3 as did studies of Eastern
European and Soviet communications behavior, at least one of which
was almost certainly produced under contract with the CIA. 4
The field of overt or "white" propaganda had evolved prior to Korea
in somewhat the same way as had "black" propaganda and clandestine
operations. Congress passed the Smith-Mundt Act authorizing a per-
manent U.S. Office of International Information (Oil) less than three
months after the National Security Council adopted NSC 4 and NSC
4-A in late 1947. This office evolved into the agency known today as
the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and its overseas arm, the U.S.
Information Service (USIS). The Voice of America (VOA) was folded
into this operation and its budget was sharply increased in the wake of
the late 1940s crises in Czechoslovakia, Berlin, and China. 5
At first, journalists and public relations executives seem to have
enjoyed more influence than social scientists in U.S. overt propaganda
operations. Doctrinal statements issued by the Oil and the early USIA
reflect the working theories of journalists and "commonsense" theories
of lay observers (to use Denis McQuail's media theory terminology,) 6
rather than social science theories. They made only a vague distinction
between elite and mass audiences for most U.S. propaganda, for ex-
ample, although even the earliest academic exchange programs at-
tempted to focus on foreign elites and young professionals likely to
become members of elites. True, U.S. radio broadcasting to western
Europe became fairly sophisticated, with audience research in the region
contracted out to private survey specialists employing native interview-
ers. (The government used private cover for these surveys, it said,
because acknowledgment of the U.S. sponsorship of the survey was
seen as likely to influence respondents.) The costly and politically sen-
sitive broadcasting to "closed" societies in eastern Europe and Com-
munist China, on the other hand, was done on a wing and a prayer,
' 'Barrack and Trench Mates"
65
with very little real knowledge of the extent to which U.S. radio signals
were penetrating local jamming and no hard information at all as to
how many people might be listening to the signals that did get through. 7
U.S. intelligence and propaganda agencies knew very little of the effects
of the U.S. program. Was it winning friends for the United States? Was
harsher rhetoric effective — or should it be avoided? Did "information"
programs really make any difference?
The government sought out social scientists who had cooperated
during World War II to answer these questions in the wake of political
attacks on the Voice of America and the U.S. information program by
Senator Joseph McCarthy and his allies. The renewed relationship be-
tween the federal agencies and these scholars soon became symbiotic.
Many social scientists regarded mass communication research as a prom-
ising, but seriously underfunded field, and they competed eagerly to
land the new contracts. The government rewarded those who appeared
to be most reliable and best able to make contributions to its ongoing
propaganda, intelligence, and military training programs. As will be
seen, one practical result of the competition for contracts was that much
of the pressure for ideological conformity was not imposed from without
but came from within the social science community.
"The Push-Button Millennium"
First, should communication studies undertaken for "white" propa-
ganda outlets such as the Voice of America or the U.S. Information
Agency properly be considered participation in U.S. psychological war-
fare? Study of Public Opinion Quarterly, the American Journal of
Sociology, and other leading academic journals of the period shows
clearly that many academic authors considered their work to be a form
of psychological warfare and undertook their projects with that end in
mind, particularly during the Korean War.
In the summer of 1951, for example, the annual meeting of the
American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) offered
three major sessions focusing on psychological warfare that featured
most of the prominent communication researchers of the era. In each
session, the reported consensus of opinion was that U.S. international
communication research could be best understood as a contribution to
U.S. psychological operations. The Monday, June 25, session was
66
SCIENCE OF COERCION
chaired by W. Phillips Davison and titled "The Contributions of Public
Opinion Research to Psychological Warfare." Featured speakers in-
cluded Elmo Wilson (of International Public Opinion Research), Leo
Lowenthal (research director at the Voice of America), Daniel Lerner
(Stanford University), and Joseph Stycos (BASR specialist in devel-
oping areas). Davison represented the RAND Corporation, which in
those years was entirely dependent on U.S. Air Force and CIA contracts.
The overall tone of the session was perhaps best captured by the ancedote
Davison used when introducing Wilson, who had recently completed
an ostensibly private, whirlwind public opinion study of five West
European countries. The central question of Wilson's surveys, " 'Who
is on our [i.e., the U.S. government's] side?' was measured in terms
of the willingness of people to do something about their feelings,"
Davison said. But Wilson's studies had been so demanding that the
' 'Soviet agents tailing him had to be replaced for nervous exhaustion.' ' 8
Lowenthal's presentation summed up the Voice of America's vision
for communication studies with a bit of fancy; The Voice was seeking
the "ultimate miracle," namely, "the push-button millennium in the
use of opinion research in psychological warfare. On that distant day,"
Lowenthal continued, "the warrior would tell the research technician
the elements of content, audience, medium and effect desired. The
researcher would simply work out the mathematics and solve the al-
gebraic formula" and the war would be won. 9 In the later, published
version of that paper (which Lowenthal coauthored with Joseph Klapper,
who was then also at the VOA), Lowenthal termed the VOA's inter-
national broadcasting "one type of psychological warfare" and said
that communication studies and public opinion surveys were "barrack
and trench mates in the present campaigns." 10
Joseph Stycos, who was at that time chief of the BASR project for
the Voice of America in the Middle East, cited psychological warfare
as the central rationale for the VOA project. He presented his survey
of nomadic populations as primarily "important for the long-term study
of psychological warfare" — not as scientifically valuable in its own
right, or even as useful for facilitating "communication" in the sense
of a two-way exchange of ideas between the nomads and the U.S.
government."
These sentiments were by no means confined to the Voice of America.
A second AAPOR session, chaired by John MacMillan of the Office
of Naval Research, focused on " Opinion and Communications Research
"Barrack and Trench Mates"
67
in National Defense." The U.S. Air Force's presentation stressed sev-
eral key areas of air force psychological interest, including "measure-
ment of the 'Panic Potential' of a public, effectiveness of leaflet dropping
as a means of communication, and the whole problem of psychological
warfare." 12 Meanwhile, the AAPOR Presidential Session, chaired by
Paul Lazarsfeld, featured as its keynote speaker Foy Kohler, chief of
the International Broadcasting Division at the State Department. Koh-
ler's theme was "the role of public opinion in ... the on-going world
struggle for power between the United States and the Soviet Union." 13
A special POQ issue on International Communications Research pub-
lished in winter 1952 marked a new high point in the integration of
psychological warfare projects into academic communication studies.
Guest-edited by Leo Lowenthal, who was at that time research director
of the Voice of America, the special issue was the first formal com-
pilation of state-of-the-art research and theory on international com-
munication of the cold war. The project deserves special mention
because it demonstrates the close interaction between "private" com-
munication scholars and the government's psychological warfare cam-
paigns, as well as some aspects of a system of euphemistic language
that served as a cover for that relationship.
Leo Lowenthal's work on the POQ project and at the Voice of Amer-
ica exemplifies the complex, often contradictory pressures that whip-
sawed intellectuals and scientists during the early cold war years.
Lowenthal — a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, a self-described
Marxist working for the U.S. government during a decidedly anticom-
munist era of U.S. history, and a culturally oriented critic of commu-
nication theory in the heyday of functionalism — was nothing if not a
survivor and an iconoclast. 14 Nevertheless, the trajectory of Lowenthal's
published ideas and of his career during the late 1940s and 1950s
parallels — with one important exception to be discussed in a moment —
those of a number of well known anticommunist liberals such as James
Burnham, Jay Lovestone, Sidney Hook, and Max Eastman, all of whom
spent years as Marxist theoreticians and activists prior to taking up
cudgels against Stalin's government. The widespread disillusionment
with the "God that failed" 15 as a hugely popular text of the period put
it was driven along by a sense of betrayal generated by the Hitler-Stalin
pact of 1939, the increasingly obvious brutality and antisemitism of
Stalin's regime, the stultifying intellectual life inside many communist
political organizations, and, not least, a highly effective propaganda
68
SCIENCE OF COERCION
campaign in the West tailored to discredit and undermine support for
revolution among intellectuals and labor leaders. 16
By the late 1940s a number of the more important advisers to CIA
and State Department psychological warfare campaigns had trained as
Marxists at one point or another during their careers, and were now
applying dialectics and other Marxian insights to the task of psycho-
logical warfare against the Soviet Union, China, and Third World na-
tionalism. So too with Leo Lowenthal, whose principal critical writings
and editorial work for Public Opinion Quarterly and other academic
journals of the early 1950s are unambiguously dedicated to applying
critical (Marxist or post-Marxist) insights to the task of improving U.S.
international propaganda. 17
Lowenthal's modern recollections concerning his VOA years still
reflect the ambivalence of many intellectuals of his day. "I'm not
interested in posing as an ardent critic of American foreign policy,"
Lowenthal commented years later during an interview concerning his
government work. 18
I looked at it from the vantage point of my specific function [at VOA];
after all, I was only the director of a certain department within the
American propaganda apparatus that didn't make political decisions itself.
. . . The governmental activity didn't compromise either [Herbert] Mar-
cuse [who had worked in German propaganda analysis for the OSS during
World War II] or me. ... I'd have to say that neither during the war,
when I worked for the Office of War Information, nor in the postwar
period [at VOA] did I ever have the feeling that I was working for an
imperialist power. .. . After all, there were two superpowers opposing
each other, and it's difficult to make out just who — the United States or
the Soviet Union — engaged in the more imperialistic politics right after
the war.
As things turned out, Lowenthal was not like Burnham, Lovestone
et al., in that he refused to become a professional anticommunist activist
as the cold war deepened. He preferred instead to enter academe as a
professor at Stanford and the University of California after being
bounced out of his government job by the new Republican administration
in 1952. 19 In the end, Lowenthal may have succeeded during later years
where many other academics have failed: He managed to adapt Marxist,
functionalist, symbolic interactionism and other often mutually hostile
intellectual traditions to one another, and he lived long enough to be-
"Barrack and Trench Mates"
69
come something of a grand old man in the social sciences. But Low-
enthal's work in psychological warfare at the Voice of America was
not an anomaly, in the final analysis; it was instead consistent in most
respects with that of other reform-minded communication research sci-
entists. Lowenthal's experience at VOA points up the ambiguity and
paradoxical character of the U.S. intelligentsia's response to U.S. psy-
chological warfare, and the extent to which otherwise iconoclastic schol-
ars felt compelled to take sides in the superpower confrontations of the
early cold war.
Lowenthal's 1952 Public Opinion Quarterly text on international
communication research provided a vehicle for articles that had in fact
been prepared under government contract — though not publicly ac-
knowledged as such — to be propagated within the sociological and so-
cial-psychological communities as advanced thinking on the subject of
international communication. One example is Charles dock's "The
Comparative Study of Communications and Opinion Formation," 21 a
relatively detailed presentation on the concept of a national communi-
cation system, its relationship to mass audiences and opinion leaders
in any given country, and an outline of methods for study of such
systems. Lowenthal presented dock's work to POQ readers as simply
a product of the Bureau of Applied Social Research, without further
reference to the social and political context in which dock's concept
had emerged. However, the recently opened archives of the Bureau of
Social Science Research indicate that dock's work had in fact been
underwritten by the Department of State as part of a joint B ASR-BSSR
project to improve techniques of manipulating public opinion in Italy
and the Near East, both of which were major targets of U.S. psycho-
logical operations of the day. 22
Political considerations clearly shaped dock's research agenda. ' 'We
would like to know to what extent the nationalistic awakening among
former colonial peoples in the East has led to a general distrust of
anything which comes from the 'imperialist' West," dock stressed.
"In Egypt, there is some evidence that among intellectuals, news from
America is viewed somewhat ambivalently. . . . What needs to be stud-
ied, then, in the area of opinion formation is the different ways in which
information about the world is absorbed . . . under varying social, po-
litical and economic systems." 23
Whatever the scientific merit of dock's analysis, it is evident that
his project was applied political research designed to support a particular
70
SCIENCE OF COERCION
aim, namely, the advancement among the populations of Italy and the
Near East of the U.S. government's conceptions of its national interest.
The adoption of Glock's insights by other mass communication scientists
of the period was also carried out within the same ideological frame-
work. Glock's work did not become, as some might have it, simply a
neutral scientific advance that would be taken up by others without the
political baggage that had been imposed by its original sponsors. Instead,
as a practical matter, virtually all U.S. research into "national com-
munication systems" during the decade that followed dock was un-
derwritten by the Department of State and the U.S. Army as a means
of achieving the same political and ideological ends that had motivated
the initial sponsorship of dock's project. The BSSR archives make
that point clearly: dock's writings provided the foundation for a suc-
cessful 1953 contract bid by the BSSR to develop further studies along
the same line for Lowenthal's office at the Department of State, 24 for
a series of studies concerning the "national communications systems"
of the Eastern European satellite countries 25 and of the Philippines 26
and, later, for similar studies on behalf of the U.S. Army concerning
communication systems in the Asian republics of the Soviet Union. 27
Several other articles in the same special issue of POQ have similar
characteristics. Benjamin Ringer and David Sills' "Political Extremists
in Iran: A Secondary Analysis of Communications Data" presented
itself as simply a BASR study of opinion data concerning an unstable
Middle Eastern country. In reality, it was a product of a State Depart-
ment-sponsored study of political trends in a country that was at that
moment in the midst of a CIA-sponsored coup d'etat to remove the
nationalist government of Mohammed Mossadegh, whose supporters
made up many of the purported "political extremists" of the article's
title. 28 Roughly similar attributes can be found in the special issue's
reporting on Soviet communications behavior 29 and communist radio
broadcasting to Italy 30 and in a methodological discussion of the value
of interviews with refugees from Eastern Europe as a barometer of the
effectiveness of U.S. propaganda. 31
Daniel Lerner provided ideological guidance for readers of the special
issue. Lerner's contention, which was presented at length and without
reply from opposing views, was that scholars who failed to embrace
U.S. foreign policy initiatives ' 'represent a total loss to the Free World."
As Lerner saw it — and presumably as the editors saw it as well, for
they endorsed Lerner's stand — campaigns against purportedly "neu-
' 'Barrack and Trench Mates"
71
tralist" sentiments such as "peace, safety [and] relaxation [of tensions]"
were the ' 'responsibility of everyone able and willing to improve the
coverage, depth and relevance of communications research." 32
The "private" context created by publication in POQ also helped
advance the system of euphemism that insulated scholars from the actual
uses to which their work was put. Lowenthal's work provides an ex-
ample. In the summer of 1952, Lowenthal wrote frankly in Public
Opinion Quarterly that' 'research in the field of psychological warfare"
was a major aspect of the Voice of America work he was supervising. 33
But less than six months later, the special issue he edited dedicated to
"International Communications Research" contains no explicit articles
on psychological warfare qua psychological warfare at all 34 — a fact that
was illustrated in POQ's index for 1952, which listed only two published
articles on "propaganda" and none at all on "psychological warfare."
This insulation proved effective. Four of the major articles from the
Lowenthal issue, including dock's, were recycled for university au-
diences for the next twenty years in Wilbur Schramm's college text The
Process and Effects of Mass Communication, which is widely regarded
as a founding text of graduate mass communication studies in the United
States. 35 This work challenged the popular preconception that media
audiences behave as an undifferentiated mass, which is also sometimes
known as the "magic bullet" approach to propaganda. Schramm went
on to present theories and research results tailored to exploit what was
then known of audience behavior — the "opinion leader" phenomenon,
the tendency to create "reference groups," and so on — as tactical ele-
ments in designing more successful campaigns to manipulate groups of
people.
Schramm portrayed the reports as "communication research" rather
than as, say, "psychological warfare studies." Either description is
accurate; the distinction between the two is that the former term tends
to downplay the social context that gave birth to the work in the first
place. Similarly, Schramm presented the source of these texts as being
Public Opinion Quarterly, not government contracts, thus adding a gloss
of academic recognition to the articles and further confounding an av-
erage reader's ability to accurately interpret the context in which the
original work was performed. 36 Given this tacit deceit, the audience's
favored interpretation of the Schramm presentation is not likely to have
been that Doctor Glock chose to make his living by offering advice on
a particular type of communication behavior (international political pro-
72
SCIENCE OF COERCION
paganda), because that information had been stripped from the text that
the audience saw. What the audience saw, rather, was an implicit claim,
backed up by Public Opinion Quarterly credits, that the apparent con-
sensus of scientific opinion is that international communication studies
are largely an elaboration of methods for imposing one's national will
abroad.
The work of the Bureau of Social Science Research illustrates the in-
terwoven relationship between federal programs and U.S. mass com-
munication studies beginning during the Korean War and continuing
throughout the 1950s. The BSSR was established at American Univer-
sity in 1950, and much of its archives are today held at American
University and by the University of Maryland Libraries at College Park.
During the 1950s BSSR employed prominent social scientists such as
Robert Bower, Kurt Back, Albert Biderman, Elisabeth Crawford, Ray
Fink, Louis Gottschalk, and Ivor Wayne. 37
The BSSR contract data that have survived show that the U.S. Air
Force funded BSSR studies on "targets and vulnerabilities in psycho-
logical warfare" of people in Eastern Europe and Soviet Kazakhstan;
a project "directed toward understanding of various social, political
and psychological aspects of violence ... as it bears on control and
exploitation of military power"; a report on "captivity behavior" and
psychological collapse among prisoners of war; and a series of studies
on the relative usefulness of drugs, electroshock, violence, and other
coercive techniques during interrogation of prisoners. 38 The Human
Ecology Fund, which was later revealed to have been a conduit for CIA
monies, underwrote BSSR's studies of Africa and of prisoner interro-
gation methods. 39 BSSR meanwhile enjoyed USIA contracts for training
the South Vietnamese government in the collection of statistically sound
data on its population, training USIA personnel in mass communication
research techniques, collecting of intelligence on USIA audiences
abroad, and performing a variety of data analysis functions. 40 These
contracts certainly contributed 50 percent, and perhaps as much as 85
percent, of BSSR's budget during the 1950s. 41
Beginning at least as early as 1951, the USIA hired BSSR (along
with BASR and others) for a high-priority program to inculcate a state-
of-the-art understanding of communication dynamics into the USIA's
overseas propaganda programs. The surviving archival record shows
that the BSSR succeeded on at least three counts: it introduced modern
' 'Barrack and Trench Mates"
73
audience survey methods, introduced the concept of 'opinion leaders"
and the distinction between "elite" and "mass" audiences for propa-
ganda and psychological operations, 43 and introduced the concept of a
"national communication system" (as that phrase was used by Paul
Lazarsfeld and Charles Glock) 44 as a target for penetration by U.S.
government propaganda 45
The BSSR studies for the State Department establish that, contrary
to common wisdom, the widely recognized "personal influence" or
"two-step" model of communication dynamics had become the back-
bone of USIA mass communication research at least four years before
the publication of Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld's watershed text on
the topic, Personal Influence (1955). 46 As early as 1951, Stanley Bigman
of Lazarsfeld's Bureau of Applied Social Research prepared a confi-
dential manual on survey research entitled Are We Hitting the Target?
for the U.S. International Information and Educational Exchange Pro-
gram (USIE), the immediate predecessor of the USIA. 47 (The BASR
was at that time testing some aspects of "personal influence" models
of communication behavior in a major project in the Middle East spon-
sored by the Voice of America). 48 Shortly after completing the manual,
Bigman transferred to BSSR, where he continued the Target project
and undertook a follow-on contract in 1953 for study of public opinion
and communication behavior in the Philippines. 4 " The Target manual
stressed a number of concepts that were at the cutting edge of com-
munication studies of the day, describing methods for using surveys to
track the impact of ' 'personal influence" networks on popular attitudes,
tips on identifying local "opinion leaders" suitable for special culti-
vation, relatively sophisticated questionnaire design techniques, meth-
ods of compensating for interviewer bias, and similar state-of-the-art
techniques that were well ahead of most academic opinion studies of
the day. 49 Bigman's project taught the USIA how to use native Filipino
interviewers to identify local opinion leaders; obtain detailed data on
respondents' sources of information on the United States; compile sta-
tistics on local attitudes toward democracy, nationalism, communism,
and U.S.-Philippines relations; and secure feedback on the effectiveness
of particular USIA propaganda efforts in the Philippines.
Bigman's modest 1951 manual illustrates that the evolution of the
"personal influence" concept was more complex and considerably more
dependent upon government sponsorship than is generally recognized
today. The most common version of this concept's evolution traces it
74
SCIENCE OF COERCION
exclusively to New York State voting studies between 1945 and 1948
by Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and McPhee, then abruptly jumps forward to
the publication of the New York data in Voting (1954) 50 and more fully
in Personal Influence (1955). 51 In reality, however, BSSR and BASR
work in propaganda and covert warfare in the Philippines and the Middle
East accounts for most of the six years of development between the
germination of the personal influence concept and its publication in
book form.
The BSSR's Philippines project of the early 1950s also demonstrated
the ease with which ostensibly pluralistic, democratic conceptions of
communication behavior and communication studies could be put to
use in U.S. -sponsored counterinsurgency campaigns and in the man-
agement of authoritarian client regimes. Paul Linebarger, aleadingU.S.
psychological warfare expert specializing in Southeast Asia, bragged
that the CIA had "invented" the Philippines' president Raymon Mag-
saysay and installed him in office. 52 Once there, "the CIA wrote [Mag-
saysay's] speeches, carefully guided his foreign policy and used its
press assets (paid editors and journalists) to provide him with a constant
claque of support," according to historian and CIA critic William
Blum. 53
The CIA's idea at the time was to transform the Philippines into a
"showplace of democracy" in Asia, recalled CIA operative Joseph B.
Smith, who was active in the campaign. 54 In reality, though, Magsay-
say's U.S. -financed counterinsurgency war against the Huk guerrillas
became a bloody proving ground for a series of psychological warfare
techniques developed by the CIA's Edward Lansdale, not least of which
was the exploitation of the USIA's intelligence on Filipino culture
and native superstitions. Tactics (and rhetoric) such as "search-and-
destroy" and "pacification" that were later to become familiar during
the failed U.S. invasion of Vietnam were first elaborated under Lans-
dale's tutelage in the Philippines. 55
The relationship between the USIA and the CIA in the Philippines
can be best understood as a division of labor. The two groups are separate
agencies, and the USIA insists that it does not provide cover to the
CIA's officers abroad. 56 But intelligence gathered by the USIA, such
as that obtained through Bigman's surveys of Filipino "opinion lead-
ers," is regularly provided to the CIA, according to a report by the
House Committee on Foreign Affairs. 57 USIA and CIA work was first
coordinated through "country plans" monitored by area specialists at
' 'Barrack and Trench Mates"
75
President Truman's secretive Psychological Strategy Board (established
in 1951) and, later, at the National Security Council under President
Eisenhower. 58 By the time the Philippines project was in high gear
during the mid-1950s, Eisenhower had placed policy oversight of com-
bined CIA-USIA-U.S. military country plans in the hands of senior
aides with direct presidential access — C. D. Jackson and later Nelson
Rockefeller — who personally monitored developments and formulated
59
strategy.
At the time, the implicit claim of BSSR's work for the government
was that application of "scientific" psychological warfare and coun-
terinsurgency techniques in the Philippines would lead to more democ-
racy and less violence overall than had, say, the crude massacres of
1898-1902, when a U.S. expeditionary force suppressed an earlier
rebellion by Philippine nationalist leader Emilio Aguinaldo.
But looking back today, there is little evidence that such claims ever
were true. More than forty years has passed since BSSR and the USIA's
work in the Philippines began. The Huks were defeated; a relatively
stable, pro-Western government was established in the country; and a
handful of Filipinos have prospered. Yet by almost every indicator —
infant mortality, life expectancy, nutrition, land ownership, education,
venereal disease rates, even the right to publish or to vote — life for the
substantial majority of Filipinos has remained static or gotten worse
over those four decades.
BSSR's academics did not set U.S. policy in the Philippines, of
course. But they did provide U.S. military and intelligence agencies
with detailed knowledge of the social structure, psychology, and mood
of the Philippines population, upon which modern antiguerrilla tactics
depend. Despite its claims, U.S. psychological warfare campaigns in
the Philippines and throughout the developing world have generally
increased the prevailing levels of violence and misery, not reduced
them.
Military Sponsorship of "Diffusion" Research
While the USIA and Voice of America's psychological warfare projects
were usually more or less overt and the CIA's covert, those of the U.S.
armed services generally fell somewhere between the extremes. The
military agencies underwrote several of the best known and most influ-
76
SCIENCE OF COERCION
ential communication research projects performed during the 1950s,
though their contribution was not always publicly acknowledged at the
time.
A telling example of this can be found in Project Revere, a series of
costly, U.S. Air Force-financed message diffusion studies conducted
by Stuart Dodd, Melvin DeFleur, and other sociologists at the University
of Washington. Lowery and DeFleur's later textbook history of com-
munication studies calls Revere one of several major "milestones" in
the emerging field. 60 Briefly, Project Revere scientists dropped millions
of leaflets containing civil defense propaganda or commercial advertis-
ing from U.S. Air Force planes over selected cities and towns in Wash-
ington state, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Alabama. They then surveyed
the target populations to create a relatively detailed record of the dif-
fusion of the sample message among residents. The air force sponsorship
of the program was regarded as classified at the time and was not
acknowledged in Dodd's early report on the project in Public Opinion
Quarterly. 61 Later accounts by Dodd, DeFleur, and others were more
frank, however. 62 The air force invested about a "third of a million
1950s dollars" in the effort, Lowery and DeFleur later pointed out, 63
making it one of the largest single investments in communication studies
from the end of World War II through the mid-1950s.
Project Revere embodied the complex dilemmas and compromises
inherent in the psychological warfare studies of the era. For Dodd and
his colleagues, the money represented "an almost unprecedented op-
portunity" for "research into basic problems of communications." 64
The catch, however, was that the studies had to focus on air-dropped
leaflets as a means of communication. This medium was an important
part of U.S. Air Force propaganda efforts in the Korean conflict, in
CIA propaganda in Eastern Europe, and in U.S. nuclear war-fighting
strategy during the 1950s, but it had no substantial "civilian" appli-
cation whatever. 65
Dodd and his team contended that the leaflets could be employed as
an experimental stimulus to study properties of communication that were
believed to be common to many media, not leaflets alone. They de-
veloped elaborate mathematical models describing the impact of a new
stimulus, its spread, then the leveling off of knowledge of the stimulus.
They stressed the data that were of most interest to the contracting
agency: the optimum leaflet-to-population ratio, effects of repeated lea-
flet drops on audience recall of a message, effect of variations in timing
Figure 2
77
78
"Barrack and Trench Mates"
79
of drops, and so on. Perhaps the most important lesson of general
applicability derived from the project, according to De Fleur, was that
diffusion of any given message from person to person — which is to say,
through the second step of "two-step" social networks — necessarily
involves great distortion of even very simple messages. 66
The project generated dozens of articles for scholarly journals, books,
and theses. De Fleur, Otto Larsen, Orjar Oyen, John G. Shaw, Richard
Hill, and William Catton based dissertations on Revere data. 67 In 1958,
Public Opinion Quarterly published a chart Dodd had prepared of what
he termed "Revere-connected papers" (see Appendix). A glance at the
titles and journals on Dodd's list vividly illustrates the manner in which
work performed under classified government contracts entered the main-
stream of the mass communication studies and the extent of penetration
that it achieved.
Dodd's project was both a study of propaganda and a propaganda
project in its own right. The sample messages clearly served to stimulate
popular fear of atomic attacks by Soviet bombers at the height of the
famous (and contrived) "bomber gap" war scare of the 1950s (see
Figure 2). In reality, many of the communities targeted in Dodd's study
were at that time inaccessible to American commercial airliners, much
less Soviet bombers. Most historians today agree that the U.S. Air
Force manufactured the purported bomber gap to shore up its position
in internal Eisenhower administration debates over strategic nuclear
policy. 68
No opposition among Dodd's team of academics to the actual or
potential applications of their studies has come to light thus far. It is
worth noting, however, that the CIA abruptly canceled its European
air-dropped leaflet program in 1956 following a fatal crash by a Czech
civilian airliner whose controls became entangled in a flight of the
balloons used to carry the leaflets into Czech airspace. The U.S. gov-
ernment publicly disclaimed any responsibility for the crash or for the
officially nonexistent leaflet propaganda program. 69
The CIA and the Founding Fathers of Communication Studies
Turning to a consideration of CIA-sponsored psychological warfare
studies, one finds a wealth of evidence showing that projects secretly
funded by the CIA played a prominent role in U.S. mass communication
80
SCIENCE OF COERCION
studies during the middle and late 1950s. The secrecy that surrounds
any CIA operation makes complete documentation impossible, but the
fragmentary information that is now available permits identification of
several important examples.
The first is the work of Albert Hadley Cantril (better known as Hadley
Cantril), a noted "founding father" of modern mass communication
studies. Cantril was associate director of the famous Princeton Radio
Project from 1937 to 1939, a founder and longtime director of Prince-
ton's Office of Public Opinion Research, and a founder of the Princeton
Listening Center, which eventually evolved into the CIA-financed For-
eign Broadcast Information Service. Cantril's work at Princeton is
widely recognized as "the first time that academic social science took
survey research seriously, and it was the first attempt to collect and
collate systematically survey findings." 70 Cantril's The Psychology of
Radio, written with Gordon Allport, is often cited as a seminal study
in mass communication theory and research, and his surveys of public
opinion in European and Third World countries defined the subfield of
international public opinion studies for more than two decades.
Cantril's work during the first decade after World War II focused on
elaborating Lippmann's concept of the stereotype — the "pictures in our
heads," as Lippmann put it, through which people are said to deal with
the world outside their immediate experience. Cantril specialized in
international surveys intended to determine how factors such as class,
nationalism, and ethnicity affected the stereotypes present in a given
population, and how those stereotypes in turn affected national behavior
in various countries, particularly toward the United States. 71 Cantril's
work, while often revealing the "human face" of disaffected groups,
began with the premise that the United States' goals and actions abroad
were fundamentally good for the world at large. If U.S. acts were not
viewed in that light by foreign audiences, the problem was that they
had misunderstood our good intentions, not that Western behavior might
be fundamentally flawed.
Cantril's career had been closely bound up with U.S. intelligence
and clandestine psychological operations since at least the late 1930s.
The Office of Public Opinion Research, for example, enjoyed confi-
dential contracts from the Roosevelt administration for research into
U.S. public opinion on the eve of World War II. Cantril went on to
serve as the senior public opinion specialist of the Office of the Co-
ordinator of Inter- American Affairs (an early U.S. intelligence agency
"Barrack and Trench Mates"
81
led by Nelson Rockefeller and focusing on Latin America), of the World
War II Office of War Information, and, in a later period, as an adviser
to President Eisenhower on the psychological aspects of foreign policy.
During the Kennedy administration, Cantril helped reorganize the U.S.
Information Agency. 72
According to the New York Times, the CIA provided Cantril and his
colleague Lloyd Free with $1 million in 1956 to gather intelligence on
popular attitudes in countries of interest to the agency. 73 The Rockefeller
Foundation appears to have laundered the money for Cantril, because
Cantril repeatedly claimed in print that the monies had come from that
source. 74 However, the Times and Cantril's longtime partner, Lloyd
Free, confirmed after Cantril's death that the true source of the funds
had been the CIA. 75
Cantril's first target was a study of the political potential of "protest"
voters in France and Italy, who were regarded as hostile to U.S. foreign
policy. 76 That was followed by a 1958 tour of the Soviet Union under
private, academic cover, to gather information on the social psychology
of the Soviet population and on "mass" relationships with the Soviet
elite. Cantril's report on this topic went directly to then president Ei-
senhower; its thrust was that treating the Soviets firmly, but with greater
respect — rather than openly ridiculing them, as had been Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles' practice — could help improve East-West re-
lations. 77 Later Cantril missions included studies of Castro's supporters
in Cuba and reports on the social psychology of a series of countries
that could serve as a checklist of CIA interventions of the period: Brazil,
the Dominican Republic, Egypt, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland,
and others. 78
An important focus of Cantril's work under the CIA's contract were
surveys of U.S. domestic public opinion on foreign policy and domestic
political issues — a use of government funds many observers would argue
was illegal. 79 There, Cantril introduced an important methodological
innovation by breaking out political opinions by respondents' demo-
graphic characteristics and their place on a U.S. ideological spectrum
he had devised — a forerunner of the political opinion analysis techniques
that would revolutionize U.S. election campaigns during the 1980s. 80
A second — and perhaps more important — example of the CIA's role
in U.S. mass communication studies during the 1950s was the work of
the Center for International Studies (CENIS) at MIT. The CIA became
the principal funder of this institution throughout the 1950s, although
82
SCIENCE OF COERCION
neither the CENIS nor the CIA is known to have publicly provided
details on their relationship. It has been widely reported, however, that
the CIA financed the initial establishment of the CENIS; that the agency
underwrote publication of certain CENIS studies in both classified and
nonclassified editions; that CENIS served as a conduit for CIA funds
for researchers at other institutions, particularly the Center for Russian
Research at Harvard; that the director of CENIS, Max Millikan, had
served as assistant director of the CIA immediately prior to his as-
sumption of the CENIS post; and that Millikan served as a "consultant
to the Central Intelligence Agency," as State Department records put
it, during his tenure as director of CENIS. 81 In 1966, CENIS scholar
Ithiel de Sola Pool acknowledged that CENIS "has in the past had
contracts with the CIA," though he insisted the the CIA severed its
links with CENIS following a bitter scandal in the early 1960s. 82
CENIS emerged as one of the most important centers of communi-
cation studies midway through the 1950s, and it maintained that role
for the remainder of the decade. According to CENIS's official account,
the funding for its communications research was provided by a four-
year, $850,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, which was distributed
under the guidance of an appointed planning committee made up of
Hans Speier (chair), Jerome Bruner, Wallace Carroll, Harold Lasswell,
Paul Lazarsfeld, Edward Shils, and Ithiel de Sola Pool (secretary). 83 It
is not known whether Ford's funds were in fact CIA monies. The Ford
Foundation's archives make clear, however, that the foundation was at
that time underwriting the costs of the CIA's principal propaganda
project aimed at intellectuals, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, with
a grant of $500,000 made at CIA request, and that the Ford Foundation's
director, John McCloy (who will be remembered here for his World
War II psychological warfare work), had established a regular liaison
with the CIA for the specific purpose of managing Ford Foundation
cover for CIA projects. 84 Of the men on CENIS's communication studies
planning committee, Edward Shils was simultaneously a leading spokes-
man for the CIA-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom project; Hans
Speier was the RAND Corporation's director of social science research;
and Wallace Carroll was a journalist specializing in national security
issues who had produced a series of classified reports on clandestine
warfare against the Soviet Union for U.S. military intelligence agen-
cies. 85 In short, CENIS communication studies were from their inception
'Barrack and Trench Mates"
83
closely bound up with both overt and covert aspects of U.S. national
security strategy of the day.
The CENIS program generated the large majority of articles on psy-
chological warfare published by leading academic journals during the
second half of the 1950s. CENIS 's dominance in psychological warfare
studies during this period was perhaps best illustrated by two special
issues of POQ published in the spring of 1956 and the fall of 1958.
Each was edited by CENIS scholars — by Ithiel de Sola Pool and Frank
Bonilla and by Daniel Lerner, respectively — and each was responsible
for the preponderance of POQ articles concerning psychological warfare
published that year. The collective titles for the special issues were
' 'Studies in Political Communications" and ' 'Attitude Research in Mod-
ernizing Areas." 86
CENIS scholars and members of the CENIS planning committee such
as Harold Isaacs, Y. B. Damle, Claire Zimmerman, Raymond Bauer,
and Suzanne Keller 87 and each of the special issue editors 88 provided
most of the content. They drew other articles from studies that CENIS
had contracted out to outside academics, such as a content analysis of
U.S. and Soviet propaganda publications by Ivor Wayne of BSSR and
a study of nationalism among the Egyptian elite by Patricia Kendall of
BASR that was based on data gathered during the earlier Voice of
America studies in the Mideast. 89
The purported dangers to the United States of "modernization" or
economic development in the Third World emerged as the most im-
portant theme of CENIS studies in international communication as the
decade of the 1950s drew to a close. Practically without exception,
CENIS studies coincided with those issues and geographic areas re-
garded as problems by U.S. intelligence agencies: "agitators" in In-
donesia, student radicals in Chile, "change-prone" individuals in Puerto
Rico, and the social impact of economic development in the Middle
East. 90 CENIS also studied desegregation of schools in Little Rock,
Arkansas, as an example of "modernization." 91
In these reports, CENIS authors viewed social change in developing
countries principally as a management problem for the United States.
Daniel Lerner contended that "urbanization, industrialization, secular-
ization [and] communications" were elements of a typology of mod-
ernization that could be measured and shaped in order to secure a
desirable outcome from the point of view of the U.S. government.
84
SCIENCE OF COERCION
"How can these modernizing societies-in-a-hurry maintain stability?"
Lerner asked. "Whence will come the compulsions toward responsible
formation and expression of opinion on which a free participant society
depends?" 92
In The Passing of Traditional Society and other texts, Lerner con-
tended that public " 'participation' [in power] through opinion is spread-
ing before genuine political and economic participation" in societies in
developing countries 93 — a clear echo of Lippmann's earlier thesis. This
created a substantial mass of people who were relatively informed
through the mass media, yet who were socially and economically di-
senfranchised, and thus easily swayed by the appeals of radical nation-
alists, Communists, and other "extremists." As in Lippmann's
analysis, mass communication played an important role in the creation
of this explosive situation, as Lerner saw it, and in elite management
of it. He proposed a strategy modeled in large part on the campaign in
the Philippines that combined "white" and "black" propaganda, eco-
nomic development aid, and U.S. -trained and financed counterinsur-
gency operations to manage these problems in a manner that was
"responsible" from the point of view of the industrialized world.
This "development theory," which combined propaganda, counter-
insurgency warfare, and selective economic development of targeted
regions, was rapidly integrated into U.S. psychological warfare practice
worldwide as the decade drew to a close. Classified U.S. programs
employing "Green Beret" Special Forces troops trained in what was
termed "nation building" and counterinsurgency began in the moun-
tainous areas of Cambodia and Laos. 94 Similar projects intended to win
the hearts and minds of Vietnam's peasant population through propa-
ganda, creation of "strategic hamlets," and similar forms of controlled
social development under the umbrella of U.S. Special Forces troops
can also be traced in part to Lerner's work, which was in time elaborated
by Wilbur Schramm, Lucian Pye, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and others. 95
Lerner himself became a fixture at Pentagon-sponsored conferences on
U.S. psychological warfare in the Third World during the 1960s and
1970s, lecturing widely on the usefulness of social science data for the
design of what has since come to be called U.S.-sponsored low-intensity
warfare abroad. 96
The Special Operations Research Office's 1962 volume The U.S.
Army's Limited-War Mission and Social Science Research and the well-
"Barrack and Trench Mates"
85
publicized controversy surrounding Project Camelot show that the
brutal U.S. counterinsurgency wars of the period grew out of earlier
psychological warfare projects, and that their tactics were shaped in
important part by the rising school of development theory. 98 Further,
the promises integral to that theory — namely, that U.S. efforts to control
development in the Third World, if skillfully handled, could benefit the
targets of that intervention while simultaneously advancing U.S. inter-
ests — were often publicized by the USIA, by the Army's mass media,
at various academic conferences, and in other propaganda outlets. In
other words, as the government tested in the field the tactics advocated
by Lerner, Pool, and others, the rationalizations offered by these same
scholars became propaganda themes the government promoted to coun-
ter opposition to U.S. intervention abroad."
The important point with regard to CENIS is the continuing, inbred
relationship among a handful of leading mass communication scholars
and the U.S. military and intelligence community. Substantially the
same group of theoreticians who articulated the early cold war version
of psychological warfare in the 1950s reappeared in the 1960s to artic-
ulate the Vietnam era adaptation of the same concepts. More than a
half-dozen noted academics followed this track: Daniel Lemer, Harold
Lasswell, Wilbur Schramm, John W. Riley, W. Phillips Davison, Leon-
ard Cottrell, and Ithiel de Sola Pool, among others. 100
This continuity of leading theoreticians became part of a broader
pattern through which the "psychological warfare" of one generation
became the "international communication" of the next. By about the
mid-1950s, mass communication research was beginning to achieve
some measure of scientific "professionalism" as a distinct discipline.
Jesse Delia's history of the field captures one aspect of the shift well.
Mainstream mass communication scholars'
shared . . . commitment to pursue scientific understanding of mass com-
munication's practical and policy aspects was transformed by the achieved
professionalism of social scientists into pursuits defined within the ques-
tions and canons of established social science disciplines. Within many
of the disciplines, the accepted canons of professionalism defined the-
oretical questions as of principal significance and sustained the bracketing
of overtly value -centered questions. ... By the end of the 1950s this
attitude was firmly fixed as a core commitment among the majority of
communications researchers. 101
86
SCIENCE OF COERCION
In other words, Delia argues, mass communications research became
more "scientific," placed greater stress on theory, and took an increas-
ingly objective view of the "values" (or social impact) of any given
piece of applied research.
But Delia's insight should be stood on its head, so to speak, in order
to more accurately reflect reality. Prominent mass communication re-
searchers such as Lasswell, Lerner, Schramm, Pool, and Davison never
abandoned the "practical and policy aspects of mass communications"
(which is to say, psychological warfare and similar applied research
projects for government and commercial customers), as Delia would
seem to have it. Instead, they absorbed the values and many of the
political attitudes of the psychological warfare projects into new, "scien-
tificized" presentations of theory that tended to conceal the ethical and
political presumptions of the early 1950s programs under a new coat
of "objective" rhetoric.
The professionalization and institutionalization of the discipline
brought with it a series of interesting rhetorical shifts that downplayed
the relatively blatant convergence of interests between mainstream mass
communication research and its funders that had characterized the first
decade after 1945. A new rhetoric, one which was self-consciously
"neutral" and "scientific," began to emerge. But the core conceptions
about what communications "is" and what to do with it remained intact.
This process of changing the labels while maintaining the core concept
of employing communication principally as an instrument of domination
can be clearly seen in some of those projects unfortunate enough to be
caught on the cusp of the change.
At the Bureau of Social Science Research, for example, Chitra M.
Smith prepared an extensive, annotated series of bibliographies for the
RAND Corporation during 1951 — 54 entitled International Propaganda
and Psychological Warfare. 102 This was clearly an "old"-style rhetor-
ical presentation. It is useful from a historical point of view, however,
because as an annotated bibliography, Chitra Smith's work provides a
good indication of the scope of the concept of "psychological warfare"
as it stood during the first half of the 1950s.
But by 1956 the rhetorical tide seems to have turned. That year,
RAND compiled and published Smith's bibliographies with only two
substantive changes: The title became International Communication and
Political Opinion, and the author's credit was extended to both Bruce
Lannes Smith and Chitra M. Smith. 103 The earlier acknowledgment of
'Barrack and Trench Mates"
87
psychological warfare as the unifying theme of the collection — in fact,
as its raison d'etre — completely disappeared, without changing the con-
tent of the work.
A similar incident took place at Harvard's Russian Research Center.
In 1954, Clyde Kluckhohn, Alex Inkeles, and Raymond Bauer prepared
a psychological warfare study for the U.S. Air Force entitled "Strategic
Psychological and Sociological Strengths and Vulnerabilities of the So-
viet Social System." 104 Much of the work concerned the Soviet national
communication system, which was Inkeles' speciality, including its
technological, cultural, and political attributes. In 1956, the authors
deleted about a dozen pages of recommendations concerning psycho-
logical operations during nuclear war then published the identical four-
hundred-page text under the new title How the Soviet System Works. 105
That work, in turn, became a standard graduate reader in Soviet studies
throughout the 1960s. The Kluckhohn, Inkeles, and Bauer text thus
moved from its original incarnation as a relatively "naive" how-to
manual for the exploitation of a rival communication system, to now
make a much more sweeping — yet paradoxically more seemingly "ob-
jective' ' and "scientific" — claim concerning how Soviet reality
"works."
These examples illustrate both the changes and the underlying con-
tinuity of mainstream mass communication research in the United States
during the 1950s. Leonard Doob — author of the 1948 text Public Opin-
ion and Propaganda and an activist in U.S. international propaganda
projects until well into the 1980s — expressed the rhetorical shift well
in an interview with J. M. Sproule:
Doob indicates that the very term "propaganda" began to lose favor as
the more objective [purportedly objective — author's note] concepts of
communication, persuasion and public opinion replaced it in the lexicon
of social science. Indeed, Doob reports he would not have dreamed of
using propaganda as a significant theoretical term in his 1961 study of
Communication in Africa. 106
In truth, Doob's 1961 study was no less about "propaganda" in content
or in the use to which it was put than had been his earlier work. What
had changed was the rhetorical framework in which the concept of
communication-as-domination was presented to the reader.
88
SCIENCE OF
COERCION
By the middle of the 1950s the process of stripping the social context
from research and development in psychological warfare and recycling
the remaining core concepts as simple "communication" research was
well advanced. By then, several of the early claims made for the power
that would flow from discovery of the "magic keys" to communication
behavior had failed to prove out. Many mass communication experts
had begun to regard the term "psychological warfare" as counterpro-
ductive, due to the hostility it generated among audiences targeted for
persuasion. Discussing psychological warfare "in the public prints,"
as Leo Bogart wrote in a report to the U.S. Information Agency, "is
like describing the technique of seduction, and how to make it look
like wooing, in the presence of the girl you have seduced." 107 Further,
as L. John Martin argued, openly acknowledging campaigns of psy-
chological warfare during peacetime opens the sponsor to charges of
violation of United Nations conventions and international law. 108
As early as the American Association for Public Opinion Research
convention of 1954, researchers under contract to the Voice of America
and to an unidentified government agency publicly reported the failure
of two forms of mass communication research that had been particularly
popular with government clients. 109 Content analysis of foreign pro-
paganda had been sold to the U.S. government on the basis of claims
that careful monitoring of suspect publications could help predict shifts
in the policies of rival regimes, and that it would reveal clandestine
collaboration between Soviet propaganda agencies and ostensibly non-
communist publications around the world. Both claims had been based
in large part on studies by Harold Lasswell, Nathan Leites, Ithiel de
Sola Pool, and others in the World War II-era Library of Congress
psychological warfare team. But researchers at the Bureau of Social
Science Research, Harvard, and Rutgers reported in 1954 that they had
failed to achieve the desired results. 110 Similarly, the VOA's Helen
Kaufman indicated that VOA studies in Germany focusing on means
for defusing Soviet claims of racial injustice in the United States had
failed to support Hovland's widely accepted theories concerning audi-
ence responses to "one-sided" and "two-sided" propaganda. 1 " Else-
where that year, W. Phillips Davison wrote that "in general" he felt
that "the role of agitation and propaganda in the communist equation
has been exaggerated." 112 The myth of the "push-button millennium"
in government propaganda had begun to unravel.
At the AAPOR conference of 1956, an analyst with the CIA's Radio
'Barrack and Trench Mates"
89
Free Europe decisively broke ranks. Gerald Streibel opened his pre-
sentation with a conventional acknowledgment that scholarly psycho-
logical warfare research was desirable, but he continued by saying that
despite heavy government funding of applied mass communication re-
search the "gap between the [psychological warfare] operator and the
researcher is almost as wide as ever." Operators needed day-to-day
information for "policy-making," he contended, and academics had
failed to provide it. In the real world "psychological warfare is not so
much anti-scientific as it is pre-scientific," he said. The magic keys
sought by the state had simply not materialized, leading Radio Free
Europe to turn to "journalists and other specialists" for their information
and insights into propaganda techniques. "Psychological warfare is
concerned with persuading people, not with studying them," he con-
cluded. 113
Streibel's comments created a minor crisis in the workshop. The
session's reporter — the BASR's David Sills, who will be remembered
from the Iranian "extremists" study mentioned earlier in this chapter —
inserted a special note in the record stating that the Radio Free Europe
paper "runs counter to many basic assumptions of applied research"
and "represents a misunderstanding of both . . . policy-making and the
potentialities of applied research." Each of the other speakers at the
gathering attacked Streibel's conclusions. 114
But the writing was on the wall. The problem with psychological
warfare was but one aspect of a broader crisis in academic efforts to
find Lowenthal's "push-button millennium." In the year that followed,
prominent communication author William Albig reviewed the previous
twenty years of communication studies and concluded that while output
of papers in the field remained high, he was "not encouraged" by their
depth. Little had been learned of "meaningful, theoretical significance
about communications . . . [or] about the theory of public opinion."
There had been a plethora of descriptive and empirical studies, but little
useful synthesis about opinion formation and change, he contended. 115
Bernard Berelson was similarly pessimistic. The University of Chicago
scholar concluded that the " 'great ideas' that gave the field of com-
munications research so much vitality ten and twenty years ago have
to a substantial extent worn out. No new ideas of comparable magnitude
have appeared to take their place. We are on a plateau." 116 Even two
of psychological warfare's most determined boosters, John Riley of
Rutgers University and Leonard Cottrell of the Russell Sage Foundation,
90
SCIENCE OF COERCION
acknowledged at about that time that "disillusionment" had set in
regarding the prospects for breakthroughs in the effectiveness of psy-
chological warfare on the basis of existing concepts of applied com-
munication research." 7
Despite these discouraging words, what was in fact taking place was
not the end of psychological warfare, but a shift in its targets and in
some aspects of its rhetoric. The conceptualization of international con-
flict associated with MIT's Center for International Studies was coming
to the fore. The early popularity of the "propaganda" aspects of psy-
chological war — which is to say, those most directly tied to commu-
nication media — was in decline among government funders, while
CENIS' s vision of a broader, integrated strategy for ' developing" entire
nations was on the rise. The CENIS approach, it will be recalled, held
that technological innovations in mass communication had helped create
an explosive situation in developing countries by implicitly encouraging
political participation by millions of people who remained economically
and socially disenfranchised. The mass media were an important tool
for managing that crisis CENIS argued; they could help educate people
in new skills and make other positive contributions. But media alone
were not enough. The United States should also organize suitable eco-
nomic, political, and military institutions as part of the package. For
those countries where the media and an aid package were not enough
to stabilize the situation, CENIS said, the United States should provide
arms, police, military advisers, and counterinsurgency support. Thus
the CENIS approach came to be called "development theory" by com-
munication specialists; among military planners it took the name "lim-
ited warfare." 118
CENIS 's work also became important in communication theory, nar-
rowly defined. By the end of 1956, there was general agreement among
CENIS specialists that audience effects played a substantial role in the
communication process — the study of these effects, after all, was the
basic rationale for the CENIS communication research program. Study
of the "reception, comprehension and recall of political communications
in underdeveloped or peasant societies" moved to center stage. 119 There
was also tacit agreement that elite populations abroad should be the first
targets of persuasive communication.
The "old style" of psychological warfare, and particularly its em-
phasis on Soviet and East European targets, seems to have come to be
regarded as a slightly stagnant, albeit still important field. In the 1956
' 'Barrack and Trench Mates"
91
special CENIS issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, for example, editor
Ithiel de Sola Pool limited articles concerning the Soviets to six out of
forty-one published in the issue — a quite different balance from that
found in the 1952 special issue on International Communications Re-
search edited by Leo Lowenthal. Even Pool's introduction to the jour-
nal's section dealing with Soviet and Chinese Communist political
communication has the feel of a backhanded compliment: The articles
in the section, he wrote, show a sophistication of analysis that comes
from "our constant concern with it for so long." 120
There is no indication in the published writings that the CENIS authors
still believed that magic keys to communication power could be easily
located. Rather, the path to greater communication "effectiveness" —
which is to say, the ability to manipulate an audience to a desired end —
was now seen as incremental, with each new bit of insight contributing
to a growing understanding of communication behavior. There also
appears to have been general agreement among CENIS specialists con-
cerning basic methodological issues such as sampling procedures and
data analysis as well as consensus that rough-and-ready methodological
shortcuts could be used when surveying hostile or "denied" popula-
tions. 121
What all this meant as far as the pages of Public Opinion Quarterly
were concerned was that the number of articles concerning Soviet com-
munication behavior declined, while the number concerning contested
countries in the Third World increased substantially. Leading scholars
who had previously been frequent contributors of studies stressing cold
war ideological struggles turned instead to a major debate within the
profession over the failure of simple "cause-and-effect" models to
predict communication behavior.
A 1959 article by W. Phillips Davison, "On the Effects of Com-
munication," illustrates the dynamics of the new developments at the
close of the period covered by this book. Davison was at that time at
the RAND Corporation and had recently completed two books on Ger-
many in the cold war, one of which was written with Hans Speier. 122
Davison's essay provides one of the first extended articulations of
what was to become the influential "uses and gratifications" approach
to communication research. In it, he lays out a series of premises on
the interplay between communication and human behavior, contending
that all human actions are in some way directed toward the satisfaction
of wants or needs. Because human attention is highly selective, indi-
92
SCIENCE OF COERCION
viduals sort through the ocean of information that they encounter to
find the messages that they believe (rightly or wrongly) will facilitate
satisfaction of their needs. The individual's "habits, attitudes and an
accumulated stock of knowledge" serve as "guides to action" during
that sorting process. Davison goes on to argue that this framework
permits a coherent explanation of a body of communication research
data from the previous decade that would otherwise seem anomalous.
Further research in psychology and sociology held the promise of re-
vealing the specific mechanisms by which the sorting process works,
he concluded. 123
One intriguing aspect of Davison's paper is the conceptual link be-
tween this new analysis and the earlier body of psychological warfare
research, particularly the unsuccessful search for magic keys to com-
munication effects. Davison specifically rejects "passive audience"
conceptions, then readapts the tactics for achieving domination over an
audience to his new analysis. Here is how he concludes:
The communicator's audience is not a passive recipient — it cannot be
regarded as a lump of clay to be molded by the master propagandist.
Rather . . . they must get something from the manipulator if he is to get
something from them. A bargain is involved. Sometimes, it is true, the
manipulator is able to lead his audience into a bad bargain.. . . But au-
diences, too, can drive a hard bargain. Many communicators who have
been widely disregarded or misunderstood know that to their cost. 124
The audience, then, is not passive; it might rather be seen as an unruly
animal that must be tamed in order to extract a desired behavior. The
underlying similarity of both the "old" and "new" constructions, how-
ever, is the urgency attached to discovering methods for the more ef-
fective subordination of the target audience to the will of the
"communicator," and the absence of inquiry into the relationship be-
tween the communicator and political, economic, and military powers
of his (or her) society. In both instances, the social context of com-
munication is stripped away, not simply as a temporary measure to carry
out a particular experiment in a controlled environment, but instead as
a basic aspect of the theory itself. As Davison articulated it in 1959,
communication again implicitly reduces to a collection of techniques
for a "manipulator" — his word — this time explained with references
to personal and social psychology.
"Barrack and Trench Mates"
93
Davison's reference points for his argument are drawn largely from
the body of psychological warfare operations and studies that had played
such a large role in the emergence and professionalization of the dis-
cipline. He gives three examples of means by which "communications
can lead to adjustive behavior," two of which are illustrated with ex-
amples drawn from World War II psychological warfare. 125 Davison's
other proofs in the study, each of which is footnoted, are drawn from
the USIA propaganda campaigns in Greece, Lloyd Free and Hadley
Cantril's overseas surveys for the CIA, Cooper and Jahoda's propaganda
studies, debriefings of Soviet defectors, and Kecskemeti, Inkeles, and
Bauer's studies of Soviet propaganda. 126
No one can fault Davison for having read and used the literature.
The point is that here again, the paradigm of domination in commu-
nication left a mark on later mass communication studies not generally
remembered as having anything whatever to do with conceptions of
U.S. national security, ideological struggles, or the cold war.
7
Internalization and
Enforcement of the Paradigm
of Domination
U.S. mass communication studies have never been as simple a matter
as "funding = preconception," of course. True, sponsorship money
usually flowed toward entrepreneurs promising innovations of greater
utility to those who possess the wealth and influence necessary to set
the research agenda. But social science has generated its preconceptions
concerning communication in a way that is deeper and more complex
than that. At any given moment, backers of the currently "dominant"
preconceptions struggle both with colleagues who favor a variety of
"alternative" constructions and with forces outside the field, in a fierce
competition over the vision, methods, and formulations that will define
the field. This rivalry, and the shifting alliances between leading social
scientists and U.S. security agencies to which it gave rise, has remained
much more tangled than the relatively straightforward economic rela-
tionships discussed in earlier chapters.
Leading mass communication researchers were not "bought off" in
some simplistic sense during the 1950s; they instead internalized and
reflected the values of the agencies they had been hired to assist for
reasons that seemed to them to be proper, even noble. Interestingly,
academic promotion of psychological warfare during the 1950s became
one aspect of the field's defense against the nativist reaction known as
McCarthyism. That defense reinforced the authority of political and
academic centrists in communication studies at the expense of their
rivals on both left and right.
Internalization and Enforcement of the Paradigm of Domination 95
Academic historians of mass communication studies generally agree
that most social scientists of the 1930s and 1940s regarded themselves
as social reformers, progressives, and even political radicals. At the
National Opinion Research Center, to name only one example, founder
and director Harry H. Field contended that NORC's main purpose was
to permit "the voice of the common man to be heard by those in
authority." That institution's founding documents stress that opinion
polling should be seen as "a new means of making voters articulate,
which in turn should increase public knowledge and public interest in
political, social and economic questions." NORC's immediate prede-
cessor organization, in fact, was Field's short-lived People's Research
Corporation, whose name reflects the rhetoric and something of the
spirit of much U.S. social science prior to 1940. 1
The political-military crisis of World War II, however, forged a new
harmony of purpose in most of U.S. society, and particularly between
leading social scientists and the government, say Albert Biderman and
Elisabeth Crawford in a little-known, but unusually frank study of ac-
ademic-government relations prepared for the U.S. Air Force. Objec-
tives such as restoring the economy, winning the war, defeating Nazism,
and reestablishing world order after 1945 "rendered legitimate the tre-
mendous increase of public and quasi-public intervention and planning
called forth by [these] crises," they write. "Frequently, the only rec-
ognized sources of experience and expertise [for the government] for
collecting these intelligence, planning and evaluational data were [sic]
social scientists." 2 Soon a strong convergence of interests developed
between existing elites seeking social engineering tools to manage crisis,
on the one hand, and social scientists with reformist points of view
concerning government policy, on the other. "The symbols of science
often became as convenient for government clienteles of applied science
as they were for social scientists who either sought government favor
or justification for asserting their views concerning public policy,"
Biderman and Crawford contend. 3
The strength of this national consensus, particularly during World
War II, permitted social scientists to transform research projects that
might otherwise have posed "fundamental value questions" for them
into "purely instrumental" studies, Biderman and Crawford write. 4 In
other words, study topics that might otherwise have seemed morally or
politically suspect to reform-minded social scientists became acceptable,
and even desirable, targets for academic inquiry.
96
SCIENCE OF COERCION
The effects of bombing on the morale of [civilian] populations; the degree
of democratization appropriate to the armed forces; the functions of true
and false atrocity accounts in propaganda, domestic and foreign, all
became not only important questions for research, but could be treated
"objectively" as purely instrumental issues. 3
Note that at least two, and arguably all three, of the examples Bid-
erman and Crawford cite are studies widely accepted today as seminal
documents in the emerging specialty of mass communication research.
The study of the effects of bombing on civilians was the U.S. Strategic
Bombing Survey, the survey work for which was organized by Rensis
Likert. This was "the last important project in governmental [survey]
research during the war. From the standpoint of design, it was also the
most ambitious," writes Converse in her history of U.S. survey re-
search. The Bombing Survey's published studies on German and Jap-
anese morale were among the first genuinely systematic efforts to
examine U.S. efforts at "persuasion" — albeit of a particularly violent
sort — of foreign populations. 6 The "democratization" and "atrocity"
studies they mention are the work of Stouffer, Hovland, and their col-
leagues in the American Soldier series, which employed U.S. troops as
research subjects in some of the first large-scale, systematic tests of
communication effects. The same studies are widely recognized as in-
fluential in the development of research methodologies for communi-
cation studies. 7
Biderman and Crawford point to five basic factors that they believe
made national security projects "professionally appropriate" among
social scientists during the cold war years. Biderman can speak with
some authority on this point, for his own early career was funded in
substantial part by military and intelligence agencies, as was the project
from which the material quoted here has been drawn. 8 Their typology
includes:
"1. Selective attention [among social scientists] to value-consonant
elements of the military-political context." Scientists made common
cause with the Pentagon in opposition to Stalinism, for example, while
sidestepping the more problematic issues of U.S. imperial adventures
abroad and the rise of the military-industrial complex at home.
"2. Insulation [of social scientists] from the military's primary con-
cern — violence ."
"3. Perceptions of asymmetrical relationships." Biderman and Craw-
Internalization and Enforcement of the Paradigm of Domination 97
ford mean the belief among social scientists that they could use military
money and resources to advance their own careers, while avoiding making
a contribution to causes they disdained.
"4. Organizational innovations which made participation [in military
research] pose few threats to the autonomy of the profession."" Military
consulting fees and project funding often permitted social scientists to
remain in universities and think tanks, rather than directly joining the
government.
"5. Fulfillment of scientific ambitions of sociologists." The funded
projects were sometimes professionally rewarding or scientifically inter-
esting. 9
The second element, the "insulation" of academics from the effects
of their activities, is particularly important. Biderman and Crawford
and, separately, Morris Janowitz contend that the military's use of social
science "has been limited chiefly to . . . political and psychological war-
fare, military government, and troop indoctrination," as Janowitz put
it. 10 His comment illustrates two points simultaneously. First, that "mil-
itarized" communication studies enjoyed particular emphasis in gov-
ernment funding of social science; and second, that three of the more
prominent recipients of such funding — Biderman, Crawford, and Jan-
owitz — considered such work to be nonviolent. Biderman and Crawford
further contend that many of their social science colleagues adopted the
same rationale; namely, that U.S. psychological warfare (and troop
morale studies, etc.) should be considered something fundamentally
different from, say, development of improved warheads. One hint of
the extent to which this conception permeated the U.S. social science
establishment of the day can be found in their claim (in 1968) that of
twenty postwar presidents of the American Sociological Association,
"more than half are known to have had an involvement of some kind
with defense research" during the cold war. Biderman and Crawford
declined to name names, citing the "invidious connotation" that such
work had gained in later years."
Their use of the term "insulation" here is adroit. By simply ac-
knowledging that social scientists believed they were acting in good
faith, Biderman and Crawford sidestep the more basic question of
whether the academics' work actually increased social misery and vi-
olence. But the social scientists' beliefs are only part of what is at issue
here. Equally relevant is the question of whether their beliefs were
accurate, and most of the evidence shows that they were not.
98
SCIENCE OF COERCION
The literal process of the military's social science research (including
psychological warfare studies) only rarely involved front-line violence.
But the various definitions of psychological warfare promulgated by the
government, and most particularly the secret definitions designed for
internal consumption, leave no doubt that violence was a consistent and
often predominant characteristic of psychological warfare for those who
were distributing the contracts. Many academics, too, must have under-
stood on some level that their work was integral to overall U.S. national
security tactics of the day. For one thing, scholars such as Wilbur
Schramm, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and Leonard Cottrell had direct access
to the internal government thinking on such matters through their service
on elite advisory committees. Further, even a casual newspaper reader
would have encountered information suggesting that there was some
relationship between the widely reported U.S. role in violent coups or
civil wars in Greece, Iran, Egypt, Guatemala, Laos, the Congo, and
others, and the work of surveying public opinion and analyzing com-
munication systems in those same countries. More generally, how else
but through the shame associated with this knowledge can the pervasive
secrecy and rationalization that continues to surround the social sci-
entists' contribution to psychological warfare to this day be explained?
The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. social scientists active in
psychological warfare were not ignorant of their role, or of the violence
that usually accompanied psychological operations. They were, rather,
"insulated," just as Biderman and Crawford say, from consideration
of the implications of their work.
Study of Public Opinion Quarterly and other prestigious academic jour-
nals of the period brings to light a number of indications why seemingly
reform-minded academics participated in psychological warfare proj-
ects, and these reasons seem to roughly coincide with Biderman and
Crawford's typology. There usually appears to have been a convergence
of interests, rather than any single factor, that contributed to the strong
support that efforts to dominate and manipulate other peoples enjoyed
inside the academic communication research community. The moti-
vations of particular individuals surely varied from case to case, but
overall trends are clear.
First of all, psychological warfare work became a means of dem-
onstrating patriotism, loyalty, and support for one's country. These
sentiments were most often expressed in the texts of American Asso-
Internalization and Enforcement of the Paradigm of Domination 99
ciation for Public Opinion Research presidential addresses and similar
ceremonial occasions. "Public opinion analysts are helping to combat
the forces which currently threaten freedom and democracy," POQ told
its readers in its summary of Samuel Stouffer's AAPOR presidential
lecture of 1954. "To continue serving the needs of their society. . .
social scientists must take a long-range view of history and work hard
at improving their instruments of measurement." 12
At least two elements seem to have undergirded Stouffer's inspira-
tional message. He saw the United States as the protector of important
attributes such as democracy, peace, humanitarianism, truthfulness,
rationality, and Judeo-Christian values. U.S. social science was said
by many advocates to be advancing these values worldwide through its
research, thus turning back the tide of superstition and ignorance. 13
Meanwhile, many academics had the West's experience with Hitler and
World War II fresh in their mind. As Stouffer's comment suggests,
they regarded Stalinism and Third World nationalism as an integrated
attack on Western culture generally, and that was seen as an important
reason to close ranks to support the U.S. government's foreign policy
initiatives. 14
There is little reason to believe that money alone was an important
motivating factor for these scholars, if only because there are consid-
erably more lucrative fields than communication research open to tal-
ented, highly trained personnel. That having been said, however, it is
clear that use of government funding facilitated certain types of research
and the winning of professional prestige that might not otherwise have
been available.
For example, some academics interested in quantitative methodology
or in communication effects studies, who were also amenable to psy-
chological warfare campaigns, sought government funding in an effort
to pursue both goals simultaneously. Samuel Stouffer's program at
Harvard's Laboratory of Social Relations illustrated this trend. On the
one hand, Stouffer made clear his support for psychological warfare
programs as a means of meeting the perceived challenge posed by "a
handful of ruthless men in the Politboro who can press a fateful [atomic]
button" unless convinced that the "might and determination of the free
world will deter them." 15 On the other, Stouffer's publications and
those of his staff appearing in POQ and the American Journal of So-
ciology focus almost entirely on narrowly drawn methodological issues
involving the derivation of cumulative scales from unstructured inter-
100
SCIENCE OF COERCION
views. In this case, the U.S. Air Force, which was underwriting the
research, was primarily interested in deriving strategic intelligence con-
cerning the Soviet Union from interviews of Soviet refugees and de-
fectors. 17 Stouffer facilitated both that goal and his own methodological
interests by finding a means to adapt Guttman and Lazarsfeld's latent
distance scales to the raw data from the interviews. 18 A similar phe-
nomenon involving some of the same methodological questions can be
seen in the work of Eric Marder of International Public Opinion Research
on behalf of the U.S. Army's Human Resources Research Office 19 or
in Stuart Dodd and Melvin DeFleur's Project Revere studies discussed
earlier. This behavior fits well with the first and the fifth elements in
Biderman and Crawford's typology.
Another important motivator among social scientists seems to have
been a perceived need to "make a choice" between the United States
and the Soviet Union, with failure to actively support U.S. government
campaigns interpreted by leaders in the field as proof of "neutralism"
or even of Stalinist sympathies. Daniel Lerner's work provides partic-
ularly vivid examples of these pressures. "The management of inter-
national consensus presents extremely complicated problems of
symbolization," he wrote in a special Public Opinion Quarterly issue
on International Communications Research at the height of the Korean
War. "Neutralists" in the struggle with communism can be recognized
by their claim that "the choice between the U.S. and USSR does not
coincide with the choice between freedom and bondage," Lerner as-
serted, contending that those who favored the political symbols such as
"peace, safety and relaxation [of tensions]" were promoting "Neu-
tralist-Communist symbols" that had permitted the Free World to be
"out-maneuvered in the world struggle for popular loyalties." Reserv-
ing judgment on the East-West ideological conflict should be viewed
as an "evasion of political reality . . . based on inaccurate expectations
which, at some point, [will be] rendered untenable by the course of
actual events." 20
It is worth noting that the campaign against "neutralism" was at that
time the central focus of CIA propaganda among intellectuals within
the United States and worldwide. Beginning in 1950, the CIA sponsored
and financed the Congress for Cultural Freedom and a series of polit-
ically liberal, strongly anticommunist publications including Encounter
(England), Der Monat (Germany), Forum (Austria), Preuves (France),
and Cuadernos (Latin America) as a means of combating the perceived
Internalization and Enforcement of the Paradigm of Domination 101
neutrality of intellectuals in the face of purported communist expansion.
Sidney Hook, Melvin Lasky, Edward Shils, Daniel Bell, and Daniel
Lerner, among others, emerged as prominent public spokesmen for this
campaign, though they have insisted in later years that they were un-
aware of the CIA's sponsorship for their work. Either way, the point
here is simply that fierce, social-democratic anticommunism became a
genuinely powerful political movement in academe, in part because it
enjoyed considerable covert government financing. 21
Meanwhile, POQ and other prestigious journals presented academics
who advocated rival communication paradigms, or who were not active
supporters of U.S. foreign policy (the two were often intertwined), as
persons possessed by mental diseases or personality disorders associated
with totalitarian political systems. 22 Gabriel Almond's Appeals of Com-
munism study (written with Herbert Krugman, Elsbeth Lewin, and How-
ard Wriggins of Princeton) 23 presented what is probably the most
elaborate and ostensibly scientific version of this widely accepted anal-
ysis. Almond and his colleagues interviewed about 250 former com-
munists who had resigned from parties in four Western countries, then
concluded on the basis of this skewed sample that communism appealed
mainly to "individuals who were confused and uncertain about their
own identities." Leaders of communist organizations were said to be
widely regarded by their own rank-and-file as "ruthless, cynical, re-
mote, dogmatic, [and] opportunistic" individuals in whom "all values
save power have been squeezed out." 24
Whatever truth there may be in these characterizations, it is evident
that the relentless publicity given to the conclusion that Marxists were
(or might be) psychologically defective contributed to the sweeping
delegitimization of critical perspectives during the 1950s. An alternative
interpretation of Almond's data, which is in fact more consistent with
basic social science than the Princeton conclusions, is that "individuals
who were confused ..." were more likely to resign from communist
parties. But that was given short shrift by Almond and his colleagues
and never seriously discussed at the time the work was published.
Instead, contemporary academic journals presented the study's ques-
tionable methodology as a model of responsible research, and Almond
himself went on to a prominent career in mainstream social psychology.
The social pressure on mass communication researchers to take a
strong stand against any variety of critical thinking that sought to punc-
ture widely held preconceptions about the role of the United States in
102
SCIENCE OF COERCION
the world was reinforced by another important factor: the growth of
McCarthyism in U.S. society. During the early 1950s Senator McCarthy
and his political allies launched a series of attacks on U.S. information
programs and on the social sciences in general. These began with
McCarthy's well-known campaign against the Voice of America, which
led to the public purging of U.S. Information Service libraries, dismissal
of Voice officials, and repeated congressional inquiries into alleged
communists at the Voice. 25 Less well-known, but of equal importance
in the present discussion, were congressional investigations into the
major tax-exempt foundations led by Congressman Carroll Reece of
Tennessee. Reece took as his theme that major U.S. foundations —
including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Car-
negie Corporation, and the Social Science Research Council — were
engaged in a campaign to promote socialism and "One World" gov-
ernment through funding social science studies Reece regarded as critical
of the United States and the "free enterprise" economic system. He
singled out John Dewey, Samuel Stouffer, and Bernard Berelson, among
others, as purported ringleaders. 26
The foundations' principal defense against these charges was that
U.S. social science was a uniquely effective weapon in the cold war.
Social Science Research Council president Pendleton Herring offered
a report to the Reece committee contending that "in the eyes of com-
munist leaders social science is regarded as one of the worst and most
dangerous enemies of communist ideology and communist expansion.
Indeed, so strong is the feeling against sociology that it is not permitted
to teach it" in the Soviet Union. Herring went on to submit excerpts
from two hostile reports published by the Soviets — "American Bour-
geois Philosophy and Sociology in the Service of Imperialism" and
"Contemporary American Bourgeois Sociology in the Service of Ex-
pansion" — as proof of the effectiveness of sociology's contribution to
the cold war. 27
The price tag for scholars who refused to support the cold war con-
sensus could be quite high: shunning by colleagues, firing, loss of tenure
or prospects for promotion, forced appearances before collegiate and
state investigating boards, FBI inquiries, hostile newspaper stories, or
worse. 28 Even very prominent academics were not exempt. The House
Committee on Un-American Activities called Daniel Boorstin of the
University of Chicago to testify in 1953, for example, because more
than a decade earlier he had briefly joined the Communist party. (Boor-
Internalization and Enforcement of the Paradigm of Domination 103
stin cooperated with the investigation.) FBI and U.S. military intel-
ligence agents kept American Sociological Society conventions under
surveillance in an effort to smoke out radicals; 30 Charles Beard, the
longtime dean of American historians and former president of the Amer-
ican Historical Association, was drummed out of the profession when
he refused to readjust his work to the new political realities; 31 and
Harvard, MIT, Columbia, UCLA, and a score of other leading uni-
versities purged alleged Marxists and leftists from their faculties, often
at the instigation of their ideological rivals among the professors. 32
Maryland became a trend-setter with regard to driving leftists from
academe; in 1949 it passed the Ober Anti-Communist Act, which be-
came a model statute for about a dozen other states. 33 (The law was
eventually found to be unconstitutional.)
The FBI and other domestic security agencies hit institutions and
scholars espousing Marxist interpretations of the social sciences partic-
ularly hard. The Jefferson School of Social Science — a thinly disguised,
U.S. Communist party-sponsored institution that drew a remarkable five
thousand students annually in the New York area during the early
1950s — was placed on the attorney general's list of subversive organ-
izations, was denied tax-exempt status, had its student list subpoenaed,
and was eventually harassed out of existence in 1955. 34 The House Un-
American Activities Committee subpoenaed the officers and all of the
records of the Jefferson School's sucessor, the Fund for Social Anal-
ysis, and soon drove that out of business as well. The Fund for Social
Analysis had provided small grants to leftist scholars such as William
Appleman Williams and Herbert Aptheker. 35 The Emergency Civil Lib-
erties Committee attempted to organize a protest by U.S. social scien-
tists against HUAC's actions, but with little success and, so far as can
be determined, no support whatever from mainstream sociologists and
communication researchers. 36
This decade-long campaign of repression had a substantial chilling
effect on the social sciences. Paul Lazarsfeld's 1955 study for the Fund
for the Republic on the impact of political censorship on the social
sciences found that 27 percent of a sample of 1,445 college teachers
had begun to go out of their way "to make it clear that they had no
extreme leftist or rightist leanings." About 20 percent of the sample
had altered the subjects they were willing to discuss in university class-
rooms, the reference material they assigned, or the research projects
they undertook. Almost half of the teachers indicated that they were
104
SCIENCE OF COERCION
concerned that students might deliberately quote them out of context or
otherwise garble the teacher's point of view in order to report them to
school administrators or to the FBI. Some 394 respondents asserted that
they believed their "point of view on a political subject [had been]
reported unfavorably to higher authorities." 37
Within this context, academic contributions to psychological warfare
campaigns became in part a means of reaffirming one's political reli-
ability. This is demonstrated by the foundations' testimony, cited earlier,
where sociology's contribution to psychological warfare was presented
as proof of its political legitimacy. The same trend can frequently be
seen in POQ's editorial introductions to its articles, where mildly con-
troversial ideas are often prefaced with the claim that the author's intent
has been to "draw neutrals into the American-centered coalition" 38 or
to "improve America's effectiveness in the propaganda war." 39
POQ provides an example of the paradoxical role that many academic
institutions played during the McCarthy years. By continuing to publish
scholars such as Stouffer and Berelson, the journal tacitly defended their
legitimacy in the face of attacks from the radical right. At the same
time, however, the act of defending their legitimacy necessarily carried
with it some outline of what illegitimacy might be, if only by default,
and the gradual construction of barriers separating "responsible" from
"irresponsible" points of view.
In mass communication research and other fields, the academic com-
munity's shelter against McCarthyism consisted in important part of
defining and defending paradigmatic theories, research methodologies,
and standards of behavior around which the "center" or mainstream
of the profession could consolidate — a circling of the wagons, so to
speak. 40 This was not usually a battle for civil liberties or academic
freedom per se, although there was no shortage of rhetoric along those
lines. Academics who strayed too far from the safety of the center were
for the most part abandoned to their fate, as the shunning of historian
Charles Beard and of the Jefferson School of Social Science faculty
illustrate.
This retreat to the center had important implications for mass com-
munication research. It tended to reinforce the authority of the center
of the profession, and of those academics who could draw on networks
in the government and foundations for political support. It provided
considerable incentive for scholars not to explore new approaches to
understanding communication, as the results of the Lazarsfeld survey
Internalization and Enforcement of the Paradigm of Domination 105
discussed earlier suggest. And it struck deeply at the academic legiti-
macy of both the "left" and "right" critiques of mainstream social
science. The radical right's critique of U.S. social science in the 1950s,
it may be recalled, was not so different in some ways from that of the
radical left. Both protested the growing alliance between the state and
elite scholars; both were suspicious of the obscurantism and exclusivity
that often accompanied the evolution toward professionalism in the
social sciences; and both believed (though for different reasons) that
modern social engineering techniques posed serious threats to their
constituencies. 41
The delegitimizing of Marxist critiques of communication paradigms
became one element of the field's defense against McCarthyism. At
Public Opinion Quarterly and in major academic associations such as
AAPOR, scholarly participation in psychological warfare projects was
not viewed as an ethical problem, even when scholars concealed the
sources of their funding 42 or employed questionable methodologies 43
But pointed critiques of the inbreeding between social science and the
state did pose problems for the center of the profession, and they were
rarely published in academic journals or aired at professional meetings,
regardless of whether the analysis came from the left or the right.
POQ, like other respectable journals, tended to ignore or even ridicule
authors whose writings were outside of the mainstream of the field
during the 1950s, while at the same time offering a steady flow of
publicity and praise to academics who offered elegant elaborations of
the commonly accepted assumptions about the character of communi-
cation. The journal published no articles by Theodor Adorno, Max
Horkheimer or C. Wright Mills between 1950 and 1960, for example.
It did offer three lukewarm book reviews: two for Mills (in fall 1954
and fall 1956) and one for Horkheimer (summer 1956) 44 — a gesture that
tended to distance the journal from those authors, yet which tacitly
conceded that they did have something to say to students of mass
communication during this period. Meanwhile, the journal offered re-
peated articles, book excerpts, and guest editorial slots to academics in
POQ's favor, including Daniel Lerner, Harold Lasswell, and W. Phillips
Davison.
The journal openly ridiculed writers who failed to use "scientific"
formats for their ideas when offering heretical points of view on mass
communication issues. Two examples of this can be found in Avery
Leiserson's scathing review of George Seldes' The People Don't Know
106
SCIENCE OF COERCION
and Lloyd Barenblatt's commentary on Vance Packard's Hidden Per-
suaders. 45 Both Seldes and Packard argued that the mass media in the
United States presented a monolithic, ideologically charged version of
"reality" that had succeeded in shaping popular consciousness to a
much greater degree than was generally recognized; POQ presented
both authors to its readers as irresponsible crackpots.
The point here is not that POQ ' 'should" have published more articles
by Adomo, Horkheimer, and Mills, or that Seldes and Packard are
above criticism. It is rather that Public Opinion Quarterly articulated
and defended particular preconceptions about mass communication, and
that more critical authors such as Adomo were tacitly defined by the
journal as being largely outside the boundaries within which "respon-
sible" dialog could be carried out.
In sum, there were both positive and negative reinforcements for aca-
demics participating in U.S. psychological warfare projects. Positive
reinforcements included the perceived patriotism demonstrated by par-
ticipating, the opportunity for rewards of money and academic prestige,
and psychological warfare's usefulness as a means for legitimating one-
self or one's profession in a society that was often suspicious of intel-
lectuals or, indeed, of any sort of nonconformity. Negative inducements
included the desire to avoid the consequences that would come with
defeat at the hands of perceived enemies abroad, and the threat of
punishments that could come with a failure to achieve political or social
legitimacy. Particularly important in both instances was the phemonenon
of "insulation," the ability of institutions and individuals to separate
themselves from the effects of their work on others. Meanwhile, the
profession's resistance against what has come to be known as Mc-
Carthyism carried with it a reinforcement of the political and scientific
center at the expense of challenges from both the left and the right.
8
The Legacy of Psychological
Warfare
Wilbur Schramm deserves special mention in any discussion of the
evolution of ideas about communication among social scientists in the
United States. Schramm's biographer, Steven Chaffee, has written that
Schramm "towers above our field" and that communication studies
between 1933 and 1973 might best be described as the "Age of
Schramm." Schramm's specialty throughout his career was academic
administration and the definition and dissemination of the mass com-
munication "knowledge" of his day: Schramm was the "principal dis-
seminator of that Zeitgeist [of U.S. mass communication theory], those
paradigms and the knowledge yielded by mass communication re-
search ," Chaffee contends. 1 James Tankard agrees that ' 'Wilbur
Schramm. . . probably did more to define and establish the field of
communication research and theory than any other person.' a Even when
such comments are discounted for hyperbole, it is clear that Schramm
was central to U.S. academic programs in mass communication studies
between about 1948 and at least 1970.
Schramm's writings remain important today because of their contin-
uing impact on later generations of scholars and as an illustration of
the ideological and political preconceptions of the leadership of the
communication education profession during the early cold war years.
His writings between 1945 and 1960 reveal a distinctly black and white,
Manichaean view of the world that pitted Schramm's enthusiastic Amer-
icanism against ideological rivals abroad and at home. 3
108
SCIENCE OF COERCION
Even Schramm's most vocal advocates concede that his work during
his ascendancy to the peak of U.S. journalism education was charac-
terized by "interpreting mass communication behavior in terms almost
of 'good guys' and 'bad guys' " and by "a touch of ethnocentrism." 4
Though little remembered today, Schramm prepared his most influential
writings, including the watershed text The Process and Effects of Mass
Communication, as training materials for U.S. government propaganda
programs. 3 Similarly, one of Schramm's most pervasive theoretical
contributions, his still widely accepted distinction between "authori-
tarian" and "Soviet totalitarian" media systems, was developed under
US I A contract and based largely on secondary sources concerning the
Soviet Union that had themselves been prepared in U.S. psychological
warfare programs during the early 1950s. 6
There, Schramm contended that authoritarian, anticommunist states
should be seen as qualitatively better, more free, and more humane than
the Khrushchev-era communist states in Eastern Europe, in part because
of the structure of their communication systems. Schramm's schema
lumped quite different societies together into "good" and "bad" cat-
egories, ignored the complex relationship between any society's claims
and its actual behavior, and failed to account for elementary aspects of
political life in both communist and noncommunist states. What his
approach lacked in scientific rigor it more than made up for in political
utility, however, for it provided a seemingly rational basis for demo-
cracies to underwrite extraordinarily corrupt and brutal governments as
a means of facing down the purported totalitarian threat. Schramm's
formulation has passed in and out of fashion in U.S. national security
circles. Recently, it was particularly prominent during Jeane Kirkpa-
trick's tenure as U.S. ambassador the United Nations. 7
Some important Schramm writings from the 1950s concerning com-
munication remain inaccessable today, because they were prepared in
connection with CIA- and military-sponsored psychological warfare
projects that the government insists must remain secret more than thirty
years later. Even so, it is possible to begin to trace the extent to which
Schramm's career was bound up with U.S. psychological warfare cam-
paigns. Examples of such work include:
1. U.S. Air Force studies of U.S. psychological operations during the
Korean War, which were extensively recycled with government spon-
sorship in both scholarly and popular forms in several languages.
The Legacy of Psychological Warfare
109
2. Several major studies for the USIA, including an "evaluation" of
that agency performed while Schramm was chair of a citizens' committee
advocating expanded USIA operations. 9
3. Analysis and consulting throughout the 1950s concerning the os-
tensibly private (but in reality CIA-directed) Radio Free Europe and Radio
Liberation projects for the National Security Council and for Radio Lib-
eration itself. 10
4. Service as chair of the Secretary of Defense's Advisory Panel on
Special Operations, which specialized in planning for propaganda, psy-
chological warfare, and covert operations. 11
5. A post on the highly influential Defense Science Board. 12
6. USIA and Voice of America sponsorship for Schramm's The Pro-
cess and Effects of Mass Communication (1954), Four Working Papers
on Propaganda Theory (1955), The Science of Human Communication
(1963), and perhaps of other general-circulation textbooks. 13
7. Extensive contracting with the Office of Naval Research. 14
8. Later in life, paid participation in a series of U.S. Agency for
International Development (AID) programs seeking to define mass media
development in El Salvador, Colombia, and other countries. 15
Taken as a whole, the presently available portions of Schramm's
writings establish that government psychological operations played a
central role in his career at precisely the time that Schramm "almost
single-handedly defin[ed] the paradigm widely used for decades in
communication research," as Tankard puts it. 16
Government-funded psychological warfare programs — and the concepts
about communication and national security intrinsic to those projects —
provided what has come to be called positive feedback in the social
construction of scientific knowledge in communication studies. The term
positive feedback, which is drawn from systems analysis, refers to the
relationship between the overall behavior of so-called information in-
dustries, on the one hand, and the formats or technical standards adopted
in those industries, on the other.
The problematic aspect of positive feedback, according to MIT's W.
Brian Arthur, is that it can produce a phase lock that restricts the
emergence of new knowledge, and which tends to confine intellectual
innovation to established formats. "Early superiority [of an idea] is no
guarantee of long-term fitness," Arthur writes. "Standards that are
established early (such as the 1950s- vintage computer language FOR-
110
SCIENCE OF COERCION
TRAN) can be hard for later ones to dislodge, no matter how superior
the would-be successors may be." 17 Well-entrenched formats or stan-
dards of knowledge can create closed systems of ideas that change only
when they encounter more powerful external forces or collapse of their
own weight, Arthur contends.
Such "formats" for ideas can be usefully understood as components
of what Todd Gitlin calls the "dominant paradigm" 18 and Steven Chaf-
fee terms the "Zeitgeist" of mass communication studies. 19 Put briefly,
any paradigm or Zeitgeist embraces the professional consensus of knowl-
edge concerning what a research subject "is," tools for examining it,
a more-or-less defined research agenda, and a body of tacitly accepted
rules for distinguishing "responsible" from "irresponsible" points of
view on the subject at hand. 20
The history of U.S. government spending on psychological warfare
suggests that a positive feedback cycle existed in the "knowledge-based
industry" of U.S. social science. Government spending on communi-
cation research stressed those aspects of the field that were regarded as
of near-term value to the agencies paying the bills — agencies principally
concerned with propaganda, intelligence, and military affairs. This re-
strictive tendency was reinforced by resource limitations, the necessity
to justify federal agency budgets before a suspicious Congress, fear of
McCarthyism, and the belief that immediate measures were necessary
to confront the Soviet Union. Quantitative social science was particu-
larly well suited to this government market. It conveyed the impression
of being "hard" science and its stress on statistics often permitted
reform-minded social scientists to sidestep political roadblocks created
by Congress and by the powerful nativist lobbies in the United States.
Government funding clearly had considerable impact on the develop-
ment and testing of some of the most popular conceptual "formats" of
mass communication research of the 1950s, such as Dodd's diffusion
studies, Lerner's development studies, and others.
The path of scientific discovery in U.S. communication research was
not decided in advance by the government or anyone else, of course.
Although government funding did not determine what could be said by
social scientists, it did play a major role in determining who would do
the "authoritative" talking about communication and an indirect role
in determining who would enjoy access to the academic media necessary
to be heard by others in the field. This "positive feedback" for psy-
The Legacy of Psychological Warfare
111
chological warfare projects consisted initially of money, in the form of
government contracts, which in turn brought other benefits: the oppor-
tunity to participate in a social network of academics with great influence
within the profession (as Clausen's sociometric study establishes), ready
access to scholarly journals for publication of results (as is seen in
Dodd's Project Revere bibliography), invitations to participate in con-
ference panels, university and professorial appointments, and similar
opportunities for self-reinforcing status within the profession. 21
Within this context, it is appropriate to review the scientific legacy
left by government-funded psychological warfare research between 1945
and 1960. This inheritance can be seen in at least nine areas of mass
communication studies:
1. Effects research.
2. Studies of the national communication systems of the Soviet Union
and other countries regarded as problematic by U.S. policymakers.
3. Refinement of scaling techniques used in opinion questionnaires
and in the algorithms employed to derive useful data from them.
4. Creation of opinion research and audience research techniques use-
ful outside the United States, particularly in areas hostile to U.S. ob-
servers.
5. Early diffusion research.
6. Early development theory research.
7. Wilbur Schramm's articulation of the "Zeitgeist" of the field of
mass communication research and education.
8. Contributions to the refinement of "reference group" and "two-
step" communication theories.
9. Contributions to "motivation" research and similar maintenance-
of-morale techniques widely employed in commercial public relations.
The research into communication effects was particularly important,
both for psychological warfare projects and for the development of
communication studies as a distinct field of inquiry. The government
played a crucial, albeit indirect role in the seminal American Soldier
series of reports and in the related Yale studies led by Carl Hovland.
All of the data collection for the American Soldier series, the costly
data entry onto IBM punch cards, early theoretical development, sa-
laries, and much of the overhead involved in the production of these
reports were financed by the army during World War II in programs
whose object was the maintenance of morale and discipline of the U.S.
112
SCIENCE OF COERCION
armed forces. The postwar analysis of the data by Hovland and his
team — vitally important, yet the least expensive feature of the project —
was underwritten by the Carnegie Corporation. 23 As discussed earlier,
even the ostensibly "private" segment of the American Soldier project
was carried out in coordination and with substantial overlap in personnel
with contemporaneous psychological warfare projects. Data and con-
clusions derived from the Hovland experiments on issues such as source
credibility, the effects of one-sided and two-sided propaganda on various
audiences, the motivational impact of fear and atrocities, and the du-
ration of opinion change, among others, became central to the elabo-
ration of U.S. communication studies for most of the 1950s. 24
Detailed studies of the national communication systems of countries
regarded as targets for U.S. persuasion efforts also became an important
focus of early mass communication studies. This led to detailed, rela-
tively sophisticated studies of mass communication in the Soviet Union,
its various constituent republics (Ukraine, Kazakhstan, etc.), the Eastern
European satellite states, countries on the Soviet periphery (Iran, Turkey,
etc.), and countries regarded as politically problematic by U.S. security
agencies (France, Italy, Chile, Cuba, Indonesia, etc.). The studies of the
Soviet communication system conducted in the mid-1950s by the Bureau
of Social Science Research 25 appear to have been among the first reason-
ably comprehensive studies of a national communications system in the
sense that phrase is used in the modern academic lexicon. 26
Turning to methodological developments, psychological warfare pro-
grams underwrote the development of several quantitative methodolo-
gies that remain basic to mass communication studies and to what is
euphemistically termed public communication research (i.e., public re-
lations). These include much of the original work involved in the elab-
oration of content analysis as a quantitative research technique;
contributions to the refinement of survey research via support of leading
survey organizations; financing the development of experimental and
quasi-experimental research techniques by Stouffer, Hovland, and oth-
ers; underwriting the development of scaling techniques by Likert,
Stouffer, and others; and financing several of the first efforts to employ
computers in social science research. 27 Military and propaganda agen-
cies also underwrote efforts by Ithiel de Sola Pool, Wilbur Schramm,
and others to devise specialized research techniques suitable for deriving
intelligence on public opinion and media usage from "denied" popu-
lations, particularly inside the Soviet Union. 28 These techniques have
The Legacy of Psychological Warfare
113
some broader applicability to the study of hostile subcultures generally —
criminals, the very poor, the very rich, and so on — but have been most
frequently employed in budget justifications for U.S. foreign propa-
ganda programs. 29
In the area of diffusion research, U. S. Air Force propaganda programs
played a vital role in the diffusion studies by Dodd, DeFleur, and other
sociologists at the University of Washington. Lowery and DeFleur con-
clude with some justification that these studies constitute one of several
"milestones" in mass communication studies. 30 In this case, the air
force underwrote virtually the entire cost of the program, selected air-
dropped leaflets as the experimental stimulus, provided the means for
delivery of the stimulus, and contributed significantly to the selection
of those aspects of the "diffusion" phenomenon that would be subjected
to study. It is evident that Dodd and his colleagues required the umbrella
of authority provided by the air force in order to win permission to
carry out the experiments in the first place.
The substantial role of psychological warfare programs observed in
diffusion studies can also be seen in the early years of what is known
as development theory. This aspect of communication theory has
evolved considerably over the years, 3 ' but during the 1950s its intel-
lectual center was the CENIS program at MIT. The central text for this
trend was for years Lerner's Passing of Traditional Society, based on
the Voice of America studies in the Middle East. Lerner and three other
prominent development theorists, Ithiel de Sola Pool, Guy Pauker, and
Everett Hagan, became CENIS staffers during the late 1950s. 32 Each
was an active consultant and lecturer on communication issues as applied
to U.S. counterinsurgency programs in the Third World. 33
The work of Wilbur Schramm, who was clearly one of the single
most influential articulators of the dominant paradigm of mass com-
munication research of the 1950s, was so closely bound up with U.S.
psychological warfare projects that it is often difficult to determine where
Schramm's "educational" work began and his "national security"
work left off. As noted a moment ago, Schramm's Manichaean vision
of the U.S.-Soviet conflict was integral to his success as a government
contractor and to his highly influential articulation of what Chaffee called
the Zeitgeist of modern mass communication research. 34
Turning now to two of the most influential trends of mass commu-
nication research during the 1950s, it is possible to track a limited
contribution of psychological warfare projects to the development of
114
SCIENCE OF COERCION
"two-step" and the related "reference group" communication theories.
These schools — personified by Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz and by
Robert Merton and Herbert Hyman, respectively — were primarily prod-
ucts of "civilian" research, so to speak, such as studies of communi-
cation and voting behavior in the United States. 35 Nevertheless,
contemporary observers such as Bruce Lannes Smith concluded that
government-funded psychological warfare studies also played an im-
portant role in the elaboration of both theories. Writing in early 1956,
Smith paired Hans Speier's work in psychological warfare with Paul
Lazarsfeld's election studies as the two most important intellectual
sources of what would eventually come to be called "two-step" media
theory. Both Speier and Lazarsfeld were concerned that "politically
influential communications do not typically reach the broader strata of
society through direct operation of the mass media," Smith wrote, ' 'but
are instead typically mediated through individuals or groups, whom
Speier has named 'social relay points' and whom Lazarsfeld has called
'opinion leaders.' " 36 Smith credits the BASR's studies in the Middle
East on behalf of the Voice of America as an important testbed for
Lazarsfeld's studies of the two-step concept. 37 Similarly, he attributes
most of the elaboration of "reference group" theory to Robert Merton
and Herbert Hyman but then goes on to cite the Shils and Janowitz
studies of World War II-era Wehrmacht disintegration and the CENIS
program in international communications as influential contributors to
the understanding of the reference group concept. 38 Stanley Bigman's
studies for the USIA also contributed to the articulation of "personal
influence" theories well before the publication of Katz and Lazarsfeld's
pivotal Personal Influence in 1955. 39
Finally, psychological warfare programs also made limited contri-
butions to the development of "motivation" research and certain public
relations techniques widely used in civilian commerce. The field of
industrial motivation research has been largely commercial in its origin
and financing. But there are obvious conceptual similarities between a
government's efforts to maintain military and civilian morale and man-
agement programs for enforcing employee morale inside a major cor-
poration. Stouffer's pioneering studies in this field had a military origin,
it will be recalled. During the 1950s, corporate image advertising was
also explicitly viewed as a form of "intra-societal psychological war-
fare," as Public Opinion Quarterly put it, borrowed from the govern-
ment for use with U.S. audiences. 40 Similarly, Herbert Krugman, a
The Legacy of Psychological Warfare
115
prominent commentator on motivational research during the 1950s, cited
the government's enthusiasm for psychological warfare as one of six
contributors to advancing motivation research techniques — although
Krugman was less than sanguine about some of the government's early
claims for its effectiveness. 41
Thus the U.S. government's psychological warfare programs between
1945 and 1960 played either direct or indirect roles in several of the
most important initiatives in mass communication research of the period.
Much of the foundation for effects research was a product of World
War II psychological warfare. Several of the innovations in experimental
and quasi-experimental research methodologies and in quantitative con-
tent analysis that proved to be fundamental to the crystallization of mass
communication research into a distinct field of inquiry can be traced to
research programs underwritten by U.S. military, intelligence, and pro-
paganda agencies. Similarly, the substantial majority of cold war-era
studies of foreign communication systems, message diffusion, and de-
velopment theory were shaped by the perceived U.S. national security
needs of the day.
There were at least three basic features to the relationship between
government-funded psychological warfare programs and U.S. mass
communication research between 1945 and 1960. First, U.S. psycho-
logical warfare was in part an applied form of mass communication
theory. U.S. social science, including mass communication research,
helped elaborate rationales for coercing groups targeted by the U.S.
government and Western Industrial culture generally. It developed rel-
atively sophisticated techniques used in attempts to exercise that do-
minion. As Wilbur Schramm noted in 1954, "propaganda" — that
fixation of so much communication research of the day — "is an instru-
ment of social control." 42
Second, the government's psychological warfare programs provided
a very large fraction of the funding available for mass communication
research throughout the late 1940s and the 1950s. Key research centers
such as the Bureau of Applied Social Research and the Institute for
Social Research owed their survival to contracts with military, intelli-
gence, and propaganda agencies, particularly during the crucial years
of the early 1950s when communication studies emerged as a distinct
discipline.
Next, the data show that the government projects did not determine
116
SCIENCE OF COERCION
what scientists could say — but they did strongly influence who would
do the talking. The relative independence from direct interference with
research results was a desirable aspect of military-funded social research
from the point of view of the scientists , 43 and U.S. academics sometimes
brought the contracting agency research results that were not welcome. 44
Having said that, though, it is also clear that government contracts
helped organize and feed the informal networks of scientists who dom-
inated the field of U.S. communication research throughout the decade,
as Clausen's study showed. 45
Despite its claims, communication studies in the United States have
not typically been neutral, objective, or even held at arm's length from
the political and economic powers of the day. Instead, communication
studies entwined themselves with the existing institutions of power, just
as have, say, the mainstream study of economics or atomic physics,
whose inbreeding with the political and military establishment are so
extensive as to have become common knowledge.
The claim of psychological warfare advocates has long been that this
form of coercion would be cheaper, more flexible, and sometimes less
brutal than conventional war, or that it could actually mitigate or avoid
conflicts. They contended that U.S. use of these tactics abroad would
be conducive to the emergence of the humanitarian and democratic
values that the U.S. government, and most of the American academic
community, professes to support.
The problem with such claims, however, is that the supposed be-
neficiaries of U.S. -sponsored psychological warfare in a long list of
countries are worse off today than ever before. The majority of the
people in many of the principal battlegrounds — Guatemala, Nicaragua,
El Salvador, the Philippines, Turkey, Indonesia, and more recently
Panama and the former Soviet Union come to mind — are in truth poorer
today both materially and spiritually, less democratic, less free, and
often living in worse health and greater terror than before this pur-
portedly benign form of intervention began. Even some traditionally
conservative leaders, notably Pope John Paul II, have concluded that
the decades of superpower competition in the Third World — in which
psychological warfare has been a central strategy — have left profound
devastation in their wake. 46
Discussion of psychological warfare remains controversial because
reexamination of its record leads in short order to a heretical conclusion:
The role of the United States in world affairs during our lifetimes has
The Legacy of Psychological Warfare
117
often been rapacious, destructive, tolerant of genocide, and willing to
sacrifice countless people in the pursuit of a chimera of security that
has grown ever more remote. Rethinking psychological warfare's role
in communication studies, in turn, requires reconsideration of where
contemporary Western ideology comes from, whose interests it serves,
and the role that social scientists play in its propagation. Such discus-
sions have always upset those who are content with the present order
of things. For the rest of us, though, they permit a glimmer of hope.
Appendix
Dr. Stuart Dodd's List of
"Revere-Connected Papers"
(1958)
Bibliography of Revere-Connected Papers
1. Bowerman, Charles, with Stuart C. Dodd and Otto N. Larsen, "Testing
Message Diffusion — Verbal vs. Graphic Symbols," International Social
Science Bulletin, UNESCO, Vol. 5, September 1953.
2. Catton, William R., Jr., "Exploring Techniques for Measuring Human
Values," American Sociological Review, Vol. 19, 1954, pp. 49 — 55.
3. — , and Melvin L. DeFleur, "The Limits of Determinacy in Attitude
Measurement," Social Forces, Vol. 35, 1957, pp. 295-300.
4. — , and Stuart C. Dodd, "Symbolizing the Values of Others," in
Symbols and Values: An Initial Study, Thirteenth Symposium of the
Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, New York, Harper,
1954, Chap. 34, pp. 485-496.
5. , and Richard J. Hill, "Predicting the Relative Effectiveness of
Leaflets: A Study in Selective Perception with Some Implications for
Sampling," Research Studies of the State College of Washington, Pro-
ceedings of the Pacific Coast Sociological Society, 1953, Vol. 21, pp.
247-251.
6. DeFleur, Melvin L., and Orjar Oyen, "The Spatial Diffusion of an Air-
Stuart Dodd, "Formulas for Spreading Opinions," Public Opinion Quarterly, Winter
1958, p. 551.
Appendix
119
borne Leaflet Message," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 59, 1953,
pp. 144-149.
7. Dodd, Stuart C, "The Interactance Hypothesis — A Gravity Model Fitting
Physical Masses and Human Groups," American Sociological Review,
Vol. 15, 1950, pp. 245-256.
8. , "Sociomatrices and Levels of Interaction — for Dealing with Plu-
rels, Groups, and Organizations," Sociometry, Vol. 14, 1951, pp. 237-
248.
9. , "On Classifying Human Values — a Step in the Prediction of Hu-
man Valuing," American Sociological Review, Vol. 16, 1951, pp. 645 —
653.
10. , "On All-or-None Elements and Mathematical Models for
Soci-
ologists," American Sociological Review, Vol. 17, 1952, pp. 167-177.
11. and staff, "Testing Message Diffusing in C-Ville," Research
Stud-
ies of the State College of Washington, Proceedings of the Pacific Coast
Sociological Society, 1952, Vol. 20, 1952, pp. 83-91.
12. , "Testing Message Diffusion from Person to Person, 1 ' Public Opin-
ion Quarterly, Vol. 16, 1952, pp. 247-262.
13. , "Controlled Experiments on Interacting — Testing the Interactance
Hypothesis Factor by Factor," read at the Sociological Research As-
sociation Conference, Atlantic City, N.J., September 1952.
14. , "Human Dimensions — a Re-search for Concepts to Integrate
Thinking," Main Currents in Modern Thought, Vol. 9, 1953, pp. 106-
113.
15. , "Testing Message Diffusion in Controlled Experiments: Charting
the Distance and Time Factors in the Interactance Hypothesis," Amer-
ican Sociological Review, Vol. 18, 1953, pp. 410-416.
16. , "Can the Social Scientist Serve Two Masters — An Answer through
Experimental Sociology," Research Studies of the State College of
Washington, Proceedings of the Pacific Sociological Society, Vol. 21,
1953, pp. 195-213.
17. , "Formulas for Spreading Opinion — a Report of Controlled
Ex-
periments on Leaflet Messages in Project Revere," read at A.A.P.O.R.
meetings, Madison, Wis., Apr. 14, 1955.
18. , "Diffusion Is Predictable: Testing Probability Models for Laws
of Interaction," American Sociological Review, Vol. 20, 1955, pp. 392-
401.
19. , "Testing Message Diffusion by Chain Tags," American Journal
of Sociology, Vol. 61, 1956, pp. 425-432.
20. , "Testing Message Diffusion in Harmonic Logistic Curves," Psy-
chometrika. Vol. 21, 1956, pp. 192-205.
120 APPENDIX
21. , "A Predictive Theory of Public Opinion — Using Nine 'Mode' and
'Tense' Factors," Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 20, 1956, pp. 571 —
585.
22. , "Conditions for Motivating Men — the Valuance Theory for Mo-
tivating Behaviors in Any Culture," Journal of Personality, Vol. 25,
1957, pp. 489-504.
23. , "The Counteractance Model," American Journal of Sociology,
Vol. 63, 1957, pp. 273-284.
24. , "A Power of Town Size Predicts Its Internal Interacting — a Con-
trolled Experiment Relating the Amount of an Interaction to the Number
of Potential Interactors," Social Forces, Vol. 36, 1957, pp. 132-137.
25. , with Edith D. Rainboth and Jiri Nehnevajsa, "Revere Studies on
Interaction" (Volume ready for press).
26. Hill, Richard J., "A Note on Inconsistency in Paired Comparison Judg-
ments," American Sociological Review, Vol. 18, 1953, pp. 564-566.
27. , "An Experimental Investigation of the Logistic Model of Message
Diffusion," read at AAAS meeting, San Francisco, Calif., Dec. 27,
1954.
28. , with Stuart C. Dodd and Susan Huffaker, "Testing Message Dif-
fusion — the Logistic Growth Curve in a School Population," read at
the Biometrics Conference, Eugene, Ore., June 1952.
29. Larsen, Otto N., "The Comparative Validity of Telephone and Face-to-
Face Interviews in the Measurement of Message Diffusion from Lea-
flets," American Sociological Review, Vol. 17, 1952, pp. 471-476.
30. , "Rumors in a Disaster," accepted for publication in Journal of
Communication.
31. , and Melvin L. DeFleur, "The Comparative Role of Children and
Adults in Propaganda Diffusion," American Sociological Review, Vol.
19, 1954, pp. 593-602.
32. , and Richard J. Hill, "Mass Media and Interpersonal Communi-
cation," American Sociological Review, Vol. 19, 1954, pp. 426-434.
33. Nehnevajsa, Jiri, and Stuart C. Dodd, "Physical Dimensions of Social Dis-
tance," Sociology and Social Research, Vol. 38, 1954, pp. 287-292.
34. Pence, Orville, and Dominic LaRusso, "A Study of Testimony: Content
Distortion in Oral Person-to-Person Communication," submitted for
publication.
35. Rainboth, Edith Dyer, and Melvin L. DeFleur, "Testing Message Diffusion
in Four Communities: Some Factors in the Use of Airborne Leaflets as
a Communication Medium," American Sociological Review, Vol. 17,
1952, pp. 734-737.
36. Rapoport, Anatol, "Nets with Distance Bias," Bulletin of Mathematical
Biophysics, Vol. 13, 1951, pp. 85-91.
Appendix
121
37. , "Connectivity of Random Nets," Bulletin of Mathematical
Bio-
physics, Vol. 13, 1951, pp. 107-117.
38. , "The Probability Distribution of Distinct Hits on Closely
Packed
Targets," Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, Vol. 13, 1951, pp. 133 —
138.
39. , "'Ignition' Phenomena in Random Nets," Bulletin of
Mathe-
matical Biophysics, Vol. 14, 1952, pp. 35-44.
40. , "Contribution to the Mathematical Theory of Mass Behavior:
I.
The Propagation of Single Acts," Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics,
Vol. 14, 1952, pp. 159-169.
41. , "Response Time and Threshold of a Random Net," Bulletin of
Mathematical Biophysics, Vol. 14, 1952, pp. 351-363.
42. — , and Lionel I. Rebhun, "On the Mathematical Theory of Rumor
Spread," Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, Vol. 14, 1952, pp. 375-
383.
43. ,' 'Contribution to the Mathematical Theory of Contagion and Spread
of Information: I. Spread through a Thoroughly Mixed Population," Bul-
letin of Mathematical Biophysics, Vol. 15, 1953,pp. 173-183.
44. , "Spread of Information through a Population with Socio-structural
Bias: I. Assumption of Transitivity," Bulletin of Mathematical Bio-
physics, Vol. 15, 1953, pp. 523-533.
45. , "Spread of Information through a Population with Socio-structural
Bias: II. Various Models with Partial Transitivity," Bulletin of Math-
ematical Biophysics, Vol. 15, 1953, pp. 535-546.
46. , "Spread of Information through a Population with Socio-structural
Bias: III. Suggested Experimental Procedures," Bulletin of Mathemat-
ical Biophysics, Vol. 16, 1954, pp. 75-81.
47. Shaw, John G., "Testing Message Diffusion in Relation to Demographic
Variables: an Analysis of Respondents to an Airborne Leaflet Message,"
submitted for publication.
48. Turabian, Chahin, and StuartC. Dodd, "A Dimensional System of Human
Values," Transactions Second World Congress of Sociology, Interna-
tional Sociology Association, 1954, pp. 100-105.
49. Winthrop, Henry, and Stuart C. Dodd, "A Dimensional Theory of Social
Diffusion — an Analysis, Modeling and Partial Testing of One-way In-
teracting," Sociometry, Vol. 16, 1953, pp. 180-202.
Theses
50. M.A. Catton, William R., Jr., "The Sociological Study of Human Val-
ues," 1952.
122
APPENDIX
51. M.A. Oyen, Orjar, "The Relationship between Distances and Social In-
teraction — the Case of Message Diffusion," 1953.
52. Ph.D. Catton, William R., Jr., "Propaganda Effectiveness as a Function
of Human Values," 1954.
53. Ph.D. DeFleur, Melvin Lawrence, "Experimental Studies of Stimulus Re-
sponse Relationships in Leaflet Communication," 1954.
54. Ph.D. Hill, Richard J., "Temporal Aspects of Message Diffusion, 7 ' 1955.
55. Ph.D. Larsen, Otto N., "Interpersonal Relations in the Social Diffusion
of Messages," 1955.
56. Ph.D. Shaw, John G., Jr., "The Relationship of Selected Ecological Var-
iables to Leaflet Message Response," 1954.
57. M.A. West, S.S., "Variation of Compliance to Airborne Leaflet Messages
with Age and with Terminal Level of Education," 1956.
Monographs Published
58. DeFleur, Melvin L., and Otto N. Larsen, The Flow of Information, New
York, Harper, 1958.
Bibliographic Essay
This book examined the interaction between U.S. psychological warfare
and the development of mass communication theories and research
methodologies between 1945 and 1960. The literature cited therefore
centers on the following areas:
1. international events and the general sociopolitical context from 1945
through 1960, which are often referred to as the early cold war years;
2. U.S. psychological warfare operations during that period;
3. U.S. mass communication theory and research during that period;
4. writings of, and biographical data about, several major thinkers
involved in both psychological warfare and mass communication re-
search;
5. institutional histories of the major private organizations and gov-
ernment departments active in mass communication research and psy-
chological warfare; and
6. Comparative data concerning Soviet and Western European work
in psychological warfare and mass communication research.
In the following notes, discussion of the literature utilized in this
study is divided into these six categories.
Sociopolitical Context, 1945-1960
There is an extensive literature concerning the events and politics of
the early cold war years, and a complete review of that material is
124
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
obviously beyond the scope of this project. A look at a handful of works
concerning the general sociopolitical context of this period is useful,
however, both for background on events of the day and for insight into
how leading scholars and political figures interpreted those events.
Works that deal primarily with foreign affairs usually fall into one
of four basic schools of thought concerning the cold war: orthodox,
Soviet, revisionist, or postrevisionist. The rival orthodox and Soviet
trends arose more or less contemporaneously during the 1940s and
1950s. These schools articulate what might be termed the "official"
version of the cold war as viewed by the U.S. and Soviet political
establishments, respectively. 1 Their basic features are their contention
that the opposite side is responsible for the creation and escalation of
the cold war, 2 a Manichaean dualism that views the rival camp as a
powerful and evil enemy, 3 and a conviction that one's own side must
wage a bitter or even desperate battle if it is to survive the aggression
of the other. 4 A comparison of orthodox U.S. and Soviet writings
strongly suggests that neither group accepted any substantial element
of its rival's thinking as legitimate. These two trends were by far the
dominant schools of thought during 1945-60.
The revisionist challenge to the orthodox school arose in the West
during the late 1950s and early 1960s. There have been several revi-
sionist variations, but the unifying tenet of this school has been the
argument that the United States (rather than the Soviet Union) was the
principal aggressor during the cold war. 5 The postrevisionist school
emerged in the West during the 1970s as a means of reintegrating the
revisionist rupture, so to speak; it concedes a number of factual argu-
ments to the revisionists and plays down the Manichaean notions of the
orthodox school while reasserting Soviet culpability for much of the
cold war, particularly during 1945-60. 6
General works that deal with domestic U.S. affairs during 1945-60
cannot be quite so easily divided into schools, in part because there has
been a much richer and more complex range of published opinion. But
a useful distinction can be made for the purposes of this study between
those writers who regarded communism as a threat so imminent that it
impelled a major domestic response (typically involving use of psy-
chological warfare techniques against the U.S. population in order to
secure national security and ideological unity) 7 and those who regarded
that response as itself presenting greater practical danger to the United
States than did communism. 8
Bibliographic Essay
125
Taken as a whole, then, these general-context works both discuss
and implicitly illustrate the continuing division within American society
over the U.S. role in the cold war and in U.S.-Soviet relations generally.
As has been seen, these divisions played an important role in the dy-
namics of psychological warfare's impact on mass communication the-
ory during the study period.
Literature on Psychological Warfare
Literature concerning psychological warfare presents special problems
not typically encountered in mass communication research. First, the
substantial majority of U.S. psychological warfare policy writings and
operational records since World War II were classified at the time they
were created. 9 Many remain classified today or are accessible only in
sanitized form through Freedom of Information Act requests. 10 In some
cases, U.S. intelligence agencies deliberately destroyed all record of
certain particularly sensitive operations — notably those involving bio-
logical warfare, chemical experimentation on humans, and murders —
as a means of heading off congressional inquiries into psychological
operations. 11
Fortunately, however, the United States' comparatively open policies
concerning government records have facilitated declassification of a
substantial number of policy records concerning psychological warfare,
as well as a more limited body of surviving operational records. Much
of this material has not been published but is available to researchers
at the National Archives, the Truman Presidential Library, and the
Eisenhower Presidential Library. Highlights of these collections include
the National Security Council's policy papers on psychological war-
fare, 12 the records of the Psychological Strategy Board, 13 and mis-
cellaneous declassified U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force and U.S. State
Department records. 14 Discussion and documentation concerning Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency psychological operations can be found scattered
throughout the collections just mentioned, 15 and fragmentary records
concerning a number of CIA operations have been collected by the
National Security Archive (a private archive), 16 the Center for National
Security Studies, 17 and other organizations.
There is an extensive secondary literature concerning CIA psycho-
logical warfare operations. This includes histories written from several
126
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
different points of view, memoirs of participants, and journalistic ac-
counts. The reliability of this material runs from poor to excellent.
Some sources include what appears to be intentional disinformation
concerning U.S. psychological operations, but this problem can often
be offset by cross-checking various authors' accounts against one an-
other or against independently verifiable facts. 16 Recommended sec-
ondary sources on psychological warfare include definitions of the term
"psychological warfare"; 19 psychological warfare budgets and person-
nel; 20 clandestine CIA ownership and/or subsidies of newspapers, mag-
azines, publishing houses, and radio stations; 21 suborning of reporters
or media executives; 22 selective financing and/or manipulation of schol-
ars in the United States and abroad; 23 clandestine radio broadcasting,
including Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty; 24 other clandestine
communication techniques, such as use of propaganda balloons; 25 U.S.
psychological operations during coups d'etat in Guatemala, Iran, and
elsewhere; 26 U.S. psychological operations during elections in Italy,
France, and other countries in western Europe; 27 attempts to destabilize
or encourage rebellion inside the Soviet bloc; 28 use of psychological
warfare within the United States; 29 development and use of mind-altering
drugs, including LSD; 30 replies to Soviet and/or Chinese propaganda; 31
impact of psychological warfare on intelligence estimates; 32 sociological
and social-psychological studies of the Soviet Union; 33 and overviews
of the role of social science research in the general intelligence mission. 34
There is also an interesting literature published between 1945 and
I960 on the theory of psychological warfare that is often different in
content and tone from the later histories and memoirs just mentioned.
The work published during the early cold war years typically recounted
World War II experiences with these techniques 35 or argued from an
"orthodox" standpoint that psychological warfare was an essential
weapon to use in the conflict with the Soviets. 36 As noted elsewhere,
there was a considerable amount of writing concerning psychological
warfare in Public Opinion Quarterly and other academic communication
journals of the day. 37 Such writings were collected in several valuable
casebooks and handbooks that offer accessible overviews of the public
writings on psychological warfare by many of the authors, consultants,
and political figures active in the field. 38
There are a number of published and unpublished bibliographies
concerning psychological warfare. The earliest of these date to the
1930s, before the term "psychological warfare" had entered English. 39
Bibliographic Essay
127
Perhaps the most focused bibliographic compilation for the purposes of
this book was prepared in 1951-52 by Chitra Smith for the Bureau of
Social Science Research under contract with the RAND Corporation; 40
this was later published in slightly modified form by RAND and Prince-
ton University Press. 41
Myron Smith, Jr., prepared two relatively recent selected bibliog-
raphies on psychological warfare. 42 Smith's work includes 190 citations
concerning such activities during World War II and a second collection
of 668 citations covering 1945-80. The later collection is also broken
out by subject area and by country. The Sociofile computerized data
base includes a handful of citations to foreign-language works and to
more current material. 43 Former State Department historian Neal Pe-
terson recently prepared an annotated bibliography of writings con-
cerning intelligence issues and the cold war that reviews much of the
literature concerning the clandestine aspects of the cold war that has
been published during the last decade. 44
Also noteworthy is a recent annotated bibliography of commercial
and scholarly communications studies regarded as useful for design of
future psychological operations. The bibliography was prepared by Ron-
ald McLaurin, L. John Martin, and Sriramesh Krishnamurthy for Abbott
Associates, under contract to the undersecretary of defense for policy. 45
These notes by no means means exhaust the list of literature on
psychological warfare as it was conducted between 1945 and 1960, but
they are indicative of its scope and general trends.
U.S. Mass Communication Theory and Research, 1945-1960
The history of mass communication theory and research has become a
lively topic among academics during the past decade. Much of the
present literature on the subject stresses the evolution of ideas that
influenced the field, rather than the ways in which the social context of
the day helped shape ideas. As a result, there has been relatively little
inquiry into the sources of institutional and financial support for mass
communication research during the years that it crystallized into a dis-
tinct field of inquiry. With the notable exception of Converse's 46 and
Biderman and Crawford's 47 work, the role of U.S. psychological war-
fare programs in the evolution of post-World War II communication
studies has largely escaped academic attention up to now. Indeed, a
128
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
number of now standard texts that discuss the history of mass com-
munication theory mention psychological warfare only in passing or not
at all. 48
This project has built on earlier studies on the history of communi-
cation research by Albig, 49 Barton, 50 Bennett, 51 Berelson, 52 Blumler, 53
Chaffee, 54 Chaffee and Hochheimer, 55 Converse, 56 Czitrom, 57 Delia, 58
Dennis, 59 Eulau, 60 Gitlin, 61 Hall, 62 Hardt, 63 Katz, 64 Lazarsfeld, 65 Low-
ery and DeFIeur, 66 McLeod and Blumler, 67 Rogers, 68 Schramm, 69
Sproule, 70 Stouffer, 71 and Tankard, 72 among others, as well as earlier
work in the relationship between the federal government and the social
sciences by Beals, 73 Biderman and Crawford, 74 Crawford and Lyons, 75
Gendzier, Horowitz, Horowitz and Katz, the Library of Congress,
Lyons, 80 McCartney, 81 Pool, 82 and others.
Although differing in emphasis, degree of detail, and political per-
spective, each of these accounts reflects a historical paradigm of more
or less clearly defined "stages" of U.S. mass communication theory
and research. While there is important evidence that the stages con-
ception may itself be in part misleading, 83 it can nonetheless serve as
a useful framework for discussion of how leading writers view the
evolution of work in the field.
The stages are generally said to have begun with a period of early
studies into the broad macrosocietal and ideological role of mass com-
munications, which is usually dated from the late nineteenth century to
around 1940. Thinkers widely regarded as exemplifying this trend in-
clude Durkheim, Tonnies, and Maine. 84 "Mass society" models with
both "dark" and "light" overtones are widely associated with this
work; the speakers in the discussion generally agreed that the mass
media were playing a new, integrative role in modern society but often
disagreed on the character of that society and quality of life that it could
offer. 85
In the United States, a strongly positivistic, quantitative approach to
communications studies focusing on "middle range" communications
effects supplanted most discussion of macrosocietal and ideological
communications issues by about 1945. This approach continued to serve
as the largely undisputed "dominant paradigm" for the field until well
into the 1970s. 86 Most recent authors on the history of communication
research agree that this post- 1945 trend exhibited at least three char-
acteristics. First, the funded research in the field centered on efforts to
discover and quantify the "effects" of communication behavior. The
social science tools applied to the task were for the most part surveys,
Bibliographic Essay
129
content analysis, and experimental and quasi-experimental techniques
borrowed from psychology and social psychology. Second, there was
a rise of "two-step," "reference group," and eventually "limited ef-
fects" models of communications behavior. Each of these theories was
based in large measure on the relatively limited and transitory impact
of mass media messages on individual behavior that could be docu-
mented with the research methodologies then in favor. To the extent
that these theories considered media' s macrosocietal or ideological roles
at all, they tended to extrapolate the minor quantifiable "micro" effects
to a "macro" level. Third, communications research crystallized into
a distinct field of scholarship after 1945, complete with professional
cadre, institutional identity, a more-or-less defined research agenda, and
a substantial body of agreed-upon knowledge. The date for this precip-
itation into a distinct field is necessarily arbitrary but is generally placed
between 1949 and about 1955. 87
Less common in the literature, but argued in this text and (in part)
in work by Dewey, 88 Carey, 89 Hall, 90 Biderman and Crawford, 91 and
others, are several corollary propositions. Commercial, political, and
military groups seeking new techniques to preserve and advance their
existing role in society provided the substantial majority of funds for
the quantitative studies that elaborated narrowly positivistic models of
communication behavior. 92 The U.S. government's psychological war-
fare programs were an important funder, particularly during the years
in which mass communication research crystallized into a distinct field. 93
While the funders did not determine the results of mass communication
studies, they did often determine which questions would receive atten-
tion, and they exerted considerable indirect influence on the selection
of "leaders" and "authorities" in the field through the extension or
withholding of the resources necessary for large-scale research. One
result of this process was the virtual eclipse of conceptions of com-
munication as a ritual or sharing behavior — which had been a prominent
part of Dewey's thought, 94 for example — and its replacement by baroque
elaborations of theories of communication as a highly instrumental pro-
cess of persuasion and coercion. 95
Biographical Data on Key Personalities
Four prominent mass communication researchers active in psychological
warfare projects during 1945-60 provided the starting point for this
130
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
book's examination of key personalities in this field. They are Hadley
Cantril, Harold Lasswell, Daniel Lemer, and Wilbur Schramm, and
each has left a substantial body of work concerning mass communi-
cation, psychological warfare, and political affairs.
Albert Hadley Cantril (generally known as Hadley Cantril) wrote or
edited, alone or with colleagues, at least 24 book-length studies 96 and
a reported 120 scholarly articles for professional journals. 97 Cantril
published an intellectual memoir, 98 and biographical notes concerning
his career are available in several standard sources. 99 Cantril is remem-
bered primarily for the application of psychology to the study of political
and social affairs and for his contributions to opinion research. 100 Par-
ticular note should be made of Cantril's longtime partner, Lloyd A.
Free, who collaborated with Cantril in the Institute for International
Social Research 101 and wrote several books with him. 102
Harold Lasswell was probably the most prolific of the authors con-
sidered here, having written or edited some forty-seven identifiable
book-length works between 1924 and 1980, several of which appeared
in three and even four separate editions. 103 Lasswell is perhaps best
remembered for his sloganlike formulations of political affairs and media
dynamics, which became the foundation for many functionalist theories
of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. 104 Lasswell's Propaganda Technique
in the World War (first issued in 1927 and subsequently reissued in
three further editions) is widely regarded as one of the seminal works
of modern mass communication theory. 105
Daniel Lerner, a frequent collaborator of Lasswell's, wrote or coe-
dited at least four texts with him, 106 each of which dealt in some manner
with propaganda and psychological warfare. Lerner published at least
eighteen book-length works during his career, 107 as well as numerous
journal articles. 108 Lerner's work was somewhat more tightly focused
than that of Cantril or Lasswell, with greater attention to psychological
warfare, propaganda, and methodological issues in social science re-
search. 109 Lerner either wrote, edited, or contributed to virtually every
major collection of essays on psychological warfare published from
1945 to 1980. 110
Wilbur Schramm is widely regarded as a pivotal figure in the crys-
tallization of U.S. mass communications research into a distinct field
of scientific inquiry. 111 Schramm's role as a psychological warfare con-
tractor, operator, and promoter is less widely understood, however.
During the 1950s, Schramm's personal income and professional prestige
Bibliographic Essay
131
were to a significant degree dependent upon his work for the U.S. Air
Force, U.S. Information Agency, Department of Defense, and the CIA-
sponsored propaganda organization Radio Free Europe. 112
The four authors discussed here — Cantril, Lasswell, Lerner, and
Schramm — do not, of course, exhaust the list of noted social scientists
and mass communication theorists active in psychological warfare proj-
ects during the early cold war years. Other prominent figures in mass
communication research who participated in substantial, but varying,
degrees include Kurt Back, 113 Edward Barrett, 114 Raymond Bauer, 115
Robert Bower, 116 Albert Biderman, 117 Stanley Bigman, 118 Leonard Cot-
trell, 119 Leo Crespi, 120 William Daugherty, 121 W. Phillips Davison, 122
Leonard Doob, 123 Murray Dyer, 124 Harry Eckstein, 125 Lloyd Free, 126
George Gallup, 127 Alexander George, 128 Robert Holt, 129 Carl Hov-
land, 130 Alex Inkeles, 131 Irving Janis, 132 Morris Janowitz, 133 Joseph
Klapper, 134 Clyde Kluckhohn, 135 Klaus Knorr, 136 Hideya Kumata, 137
Paul Lazarsfeld, l3S Alexander Leighton, 139 Nathan Leites, 140 Paul M.
Linebarger, 141 Leo Lowenthal, 142 L. John Martin, 143 Margaret Mead, 144
Jesse Orlansky, 145 Saul Padover, 146 Ithiel de Sola Pool, 147 DeWitt
Poole, 148 Lucian Pye, 149 John W. Riley, 150 Carroll Shartle, 151 Chitra
Smith, 152 Hans Speier, 153 Samuel Stouffer, 154 Ralph K. White, 155 and
William R. Young. 156
Institutional Histories
The institutional frameworks of U.S. mass communication research, on
the one hand, and of U.S. psychological warfare operations, on the
other, went through an intricate, interlocked evolution during 1945-60.
Some familiarity with these shifts is necessary to understand the rela-
tionship between the two trends. Jean Converse 157 offers what is prob-
ably the best and most accessible institutional histories of the Bureau
of Applied Social Research, National Opinion Research Center, and
the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, each of which
was a center of mass communication scholarship and a contractor for
psychological warfare -related research at various points between 1945
and 1960. Additional institutional studies are available for the RAND
Corporation, 158 BASR, 159 NORC, 160 ISR, 161 Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Center for International Studies, 162 and Harvard Univer-
sity's Russian Research Center. 163 The archives of the Bureau of Social
132
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY
Science Research, an important center of both mass communication
research and psychological warfare contracting during the 1950s, are
now held by the University of Maryland Libraries' Special Collections
unit and by American University. There is no history text, as such,
concerning BSSR, but archivists have prepared a detailed finding aid
to the Maryland record collection, which permits reconstruction of many
BSSR activities. 164
Institutional histories concerning psychological warfare operations are
generally less accessible and less likely to be familiar to mass com-
munication scholars. The sources cited in the "Psychological Warfare"
section of this essay (above) cover much of this ground. Particularly
noteworthy, however, are two histories of Radio Free Europe 165 and
several recent studies of the U.S. Army's Special Forces. 166
Soviet and European Psychological Warfare
This text focuses on the U.S. experience in psychological warfare with-
out attempting to fully document the activities of U.S. rivals and allies
in this field. Some comparative data are valuable nonetheless in order
to place the U.S. efforts in context.
Internal documents concerning the development of psychological war-
fare strategy by the Soviet Union and its allies are not available at this
writing, although there is testimony from East bloc defectors on the
subject, 167 and some suggestion that relevant Soviet archives may open
during the next decade. 168 There is also a substantial secondary literature
from Western specialists concerning U.S.S.R. practices in this field. 169
For the most part, these writings reflect an "orthodox" conception of
the cold war and a concern that Soviet propaganda has been effective
in shaping the opinions of its target audiences. 170
Original documentation concerning psychological warfare activities
by U.S. allies in Europe is relatively sparse, but some secondary lit-
erature is available. 171 These works tend to be descriptive rather than
theoretical in nature, but they suggest that Western European govern-
mental thinking concerning propaganda and psychological warfare has
followed roughly the same evolution seen in the United States. 172
Notes
Chapter 1
1. Concerning ideological workers, today a substantial majority of employers
of entry-level television and radio reporters, newspaper and magazine editors
and writers, many types of advertising specialists, public relations personnel
(or, to use the currently preferred term, "public communication" experts)
require new hires to arrive with advanced degrees in one of several varieties
of mass communication study. See W. W. Schwed, "Hiring, Promotion, Salary,
Longevity Trends Charted at Dailies," Newspaper Research Journal (October
1981); Lee Becker, 3. W. Fruit, and S. L. Caudill, The Training and Hiring
of Journalists (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1987).
2. Albert Biderman and Elizabeth Crawford, The Political Economics of
Social Research: The Case of Sociology (Springfield, VA: Clearinghouse for
Federal Scientific and Technological Information, 1968).
3. On BASR, see Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United States
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 269, 275-76, 506-7 notes
37 and 42. On Cantril's HSR, see John Crewdson and Joseph Treaster, "The
CIA's 3-Decade Effort to Mold the World's Views," New York Times, De-
cember 25, 26, and 27, 1977, with discussion of Cantril and the IISR on
December 26. For Cantril's version, which conceals the true source of his
funds, see Hadley Cantril, The Human Dimension: Experiences in Policy Re-
search (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967). On CENIS, see
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies, The
Center for International Studies: A Description, (Cambridge: MIT, July 1955);
U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, Problems of Development
and Internal Defense, Report of a Country Team Seminar, June 11 — July 13,
1962; (Washington, DC: Foreign Service Institute, 1962); and Ithiel de Sola
134
NOTES
Pool, "The Necessity for Social Scientists Doing Research for Governments,"
Background 10, no. 2 (August 1966): 111 — 22. Other major communication
research projects that depended heavily on funding from U.S. government
psychological warfare agencies included the National Opinion Research Center,
the Survey Research Center (now named the Institute for Social Research), and
the Bureau of Social Science Research. The text that follows discusses these
in greater detail.
4. For details on the Department of State contracts, which produced a scandal
when they were uncovered in 1957, see House Committee on Government
Operations, State Department Opinion Polls, 85th Cong., 1st sess., June- July
1957 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1957).
5. Albert Biderman, "Social-Psychological Needs and 'Involuntary' Behav-
ior as Illustrated by Compliance in Interrogation," Sociometry 23, no. 2 (June
1960): 120-47; Louis Gottschalk, The Use of Drugs in Information-Seeking
Interviews, Bureau of Social Science Research report 322, December 1958,
BSSR Archives, series II, box 11, University of Maryland Libraries Special
Collections, College Park; and Albert Biderman, Barbara Heller, and Paula
Epstein, A Selected Bibliography on Captivity Behavior, Bureau of Social Sci-
ence Research report 339-1, February 1961, BSSR Archives, series II, box 14,
also at the University of Maryland. Biderman acknowledges the Human Ecology
Fund — later revealed to have been a conduit for CIA funds — and U.S. Air Force
contract no. AF 49 (638)727 as the source of his funding for this work. For
more on the CIA's use of the Human Ecology Fund and of the related Society
for the Investigation of Human Ecology, see John Marks, The Search for the
"Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control (New York: Times
Books, 1979), pp. 147-63.
6. Jesse Delia, "Communication Research: A History," in Charles Berger
and Steven Chaffee (eds.) Handbook of Communication Science (Newbury Park,
CA: Sage, 1987), pp. 20-98.
7. Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press,
1968), pp. 504-5, discusses Lazarsfeld's and Merton's own views. On this
point see also Theodore Adorno, "Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar
in America," in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (eds.), The Intellectual
Migration: Europe and America 1930-1960 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1969), p. 343; and Willard Rowland, The Politics of TV Violence
(Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1983).
8. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 10.
9. Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford, The Political Economics of Social
Research. For related texts concerning political and economic aspects of social
science research, see Albert Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford, "The Basis of
Allocation to Social Scientific Work," paper presented to American Sociological
Notes
135
Association, September 1969, now at BSSR Archives, series V, box 3, Uni-
versity of Maryland Libraries Special Collections, College Park; Albert Bid-
erman and Elisabeth Crawford, "Paper Money: Trends of Research Sponsorship
in American Sociology Journals, 1 ' Social Sciences Information (Paris), 9, no.
1 (February 1970):51-77; Elisabeth Crawford and Gene Lyons, "Foreign Area
Research: A Background Statement," American Behavioral Scientist 10 (June
1967):3 — 7; Elisabeth Crawford and Albert Biderman, Social Science and In-
ternational Affairs (New York: Wiley, 1969); James McCartney, "On Being
Scientific: Changing Styles of Presentation of Sociological Research," Amer-
ican Sociologist (February 1970):30-35; Pool, "The Necessity for Social Sci-
entists Doing Research for Governments"; Gene M. Lyons, The Uneasy
Partnership; Social Science and the Federal Government in the Twentieth Cen-
tury (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1969); House Committee on Gov-
ernment Operations, The Use of Social Research in Federal Domestic Programs,
4 vols., 90th Cong. 1st sess. January-December 1967 (Washington, DC: GPO,
1967). For more recent analysis, see Richard Nathan, Social Science in Gov-
ernment: Uses and Misuses (New York: Basic Books, 1988); and Otto Larsen,
Milestones and Millstones: Social Science at the National Science Foundation,
1945-1991 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1992). More critical texts on
this issue include Ralph Beals, Politics of Social Research (Chicago: Aldine,
1969); Irving Louis Horowitz and James Everett Katz, Social Science and Public
Policy in the United States (New York: Praeger, 1975); Irving Louis Horowitz
(ed.), The Use and Abuse of Social Science (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction,
1971); Irene Gendzier, Managing Political Change: Social Scientists and the
Third World (Boulder, CO.: Westview Press, 1985).
10. Steven Chaffee and John Hochheimer, "The Beginnings of Political
Communications Research in the United States: Origins of the Limited Effects'
Model," in Michael Gurevitch and Mark Levy (eds.). Mass Communications
Yearbook, Vol. 5 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1985), pp. 75-104, quote on p.
77.
11. Quoted in John Hughes, '"Free Radio' for China," Christian Science
Monitor, July 30, 1992.
12. Pool, "The Necessity for Social Scientists Doing Research for Govern-
ments."
13. National Science Foundation, Federal Funds for Science (Washington,
DC: GPO, 1953), pp. 35-48; and "The Federal Government in Behavioral
Science," special issue of The American Behavioral Scientist 7, no. 9 (May
1964), William Ellis (study director).
14. James Burnham, Containment or Liberation? (New York: John Day,
1953), p. 188. For fragmentary, but supporting data see also Comptroller Gen-
eral of the United States (General Accounting Office), U.S. Government Monies
Provided to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Washington, DC: GPO,
136
NOTES
1972), with a classified annex obtained via the Freedom of Information Act;
Sig Mikelson, America's Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and
Radio Liberty (New York: Praeger, 1983); Larry D. Collins, "The Free Europe
Committee: American Weapon of the Cold War," Ph.D. diss., Carlton Uni-
versity, 1975, Canadian Thesis on Microfilm Service call no. TC20090; James
R. Price, Radio Free Europe: A Survey and Analysis (Washington, DC:
Congressional Research Service Document No. JX 1710 U.S. B, March 1972);
and Ioseph Whelan, Radio Liberty: A Study of Its Origins, Structure, Policy,
Programming and Effectiveness (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Ser-
vice, 1972).
15. National Science Foundation, Federal Funds for Science, and American
Behavioral Scientist.
16. Biderman and Crawford, Political Economics of Social Research, pp.
20-26. For a detailed discussion of the role of the Ford Foundation and Carnegie
Corporation, see Chapter 4.
17. See, for example, Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, The Academic
Mind: Social Scientists in a Time of Crisis (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958); or
Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthvism and the Universities (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
18. Daniel Lerner with Lucille Pevsner, The Passing of Traditional Society
(Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958).
19. William Daugherty and Morris Janowitz (eds.), A Psychological Warfare
Casebook (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins [for U.S. Army Operations Research
Office], 1958), p. 12; their reference is to Ladislas Farago, German Psycho-
logical Warfare (New York: Putnam, 1941).
20. Daugherty and Janowitz, A Psychological Warfare Casebook, pp. 12-
35.
21. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Military Agency for Standardization,
NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions for Military Use (unclassified) (Bel-
gium: NATO, 1976), pp. 2-206 and Appendix J-l; on "public diplomacy,"
see Robert Parry and Peter Kornbluh, "Iran-Contra's Untold Story," Foreign
Policy 72 (Fall 1988):3-30.
22. V. I. Lenin, What Is to Be Done? (1902; rpt. Peking: Foreign Languages
Press, 1978), pp. 199-211; Mao Tse Tung (Mao Zedong), Mao Tse Tung on
Literature and Art (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), pp. 1-44, 142-
62.
23. The principal British psychological warfare agency during World War
II, for example, was called the Political Warfare Executive; see Robert H. Bruce
Lockhardt, ' 'Political Warfare," Journal of the Royal United Service Institution
(London) (May 1950); Harold D. Lasswell, "Political and Psychological War-
fare," in Daniel Lerner (ed.), Propaganda in War and Crisis (New York:
George Stewart, 1951), pp. 261-66.
Notes
137
24. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by John Chamberlain (New York:
Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939); see also Arno Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not
Darken? The Final Solution in History (New York: Pantheon, 1988), pp. 95-
KB.
25. U.S. Department of the Army General Staff, Plans and Operations Di-
vision, Psychological Warfare Study for Guidance in Strategic Planning (orig-
inally top secret, now declassified), March 11, 1948, U.S. Army P&O 091.42
TS (section I, cases 1-7), RG 319, U.S. National Archives, Washington, DC.
Emphasis in original.
26. U.S. Department of the Army, Joint Strategic Plans Committee, JSPC
862/3 (originally top secret, now declassified), August 2, 1948, Appendix "C,"
P&O 352 TS (section I, case 1), RG 319, U.S. National Archives, Washington,
DC.
27. Ibid. Emphasis in original.
28. U.S. Department of the Army General Staff, Psychological Warfare
Study for Guidance in Strategic Planning. Emphasis in original.
29. U.S. National Security Council, NSC 10/2: Office of Special Projects
(originally top secret, now declassified), June 15, 1948, RG 273, U.S. National
Archives, Washington, DC.
30. U.S. Department of the Army General Staff, Psychological Warfare
Study for Guidance in Strategic Planning.
31. Ibid. For a more recent example of the same phenomena, see Parry and
Kornbluh, "Iran-Contra's Untold Story."
Chapter 2
1. Margaret Mead, "Continuities in Communication from Early Man to
Modern Times," in Harold Lasswell, Daniel Lerner, and Hans Speier (eds.),
Propaganda and Communication in World History, 3 vols. (Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawaii Press, 1980), Vol. 1, pp. 21-49.
2. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, translated by Samuel Griffith (London: Oxford
University Press, 1971), pp. 63-84.
3. Josephina Oliva de Coll, Resistencia Indigena ante la Conguista, 4th ed.
(Mexico City: Siglo Vientiuno Editores, 1983).
4. L. H. Butterfield, "Psychological Warfare in 1776: The Jefferson-Franklin
Plan," in William Daugherty and Morris Janowitz (eds.) A Psychological War-
fare Casebook (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins [for U.S. Army Operations Research
Office], 1958), pp. 62-72.
5. M. Andrews, "Psychological Warfare in the Mexican War," in Daugherty
and Janowitz, Psychological Warfare Casebook, pp. 72-73.
6. Morris Janowitz, ' 'The Emancipation Proclamation as an Instrument of
Psychological Warfare," pp. 73-79, and B. J. Hendrick, "Propaganda of the
138
NOTES
Confederacy," pp. 79-84, both in Daugherty and Janowitz, Psychological
Warfare Casebook.
7. Harold Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927; rpt.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971), pp. 14-26, quote on p. 18.
8. Ibid., p. xxxi.
9. Alfred Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare: Its Origins (Washington,
DC: National Defense University Press, 1982), p. 8.
10. Ibid.
11. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War, p. xxxii.
12. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922).
13. Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
1925).
14. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War, p. xxxii; D. Steven
Blum, Walter Lippmann Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 49-
64.
15. Lippmann, Public Opinion, p. 29.
16. Ibid., pp. 31, 32.
17. See, for example, book reviews by J. M. Lee, Yale Review 12 (January
23, 1922: 418; R. E. Park, American Journal of Sociology vol. 28 (September
1922):232; W. C. Ford, Atlantic (June 1922); or C. E. Merriam, International
Journal of Ethics (January 1923):210. In contrast, John Dewey wrote that
Lippmann's writing style was so accomplished that "one finishes the book
almost without realizing that it is perhaps the most effective indictment of
democracy as currently conceived ever penned." New Republic 30 (May 3,
1922):286. W. S. Myers commented that Lippmann "is essentially a propa-
gandist, and his work is influenced by this characteristic attitude of approach
toward any subject." 55 Bookmark (June 1922):418.
18. Harold Lasswell, Ralph Casey, and Bruce Lannes Smith, Propaganda
and Promotional Activities: An Annotated Bibliography (1935; rpt. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 43.
19. Harold Lasswell, "Propaganda," Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences,
Vol. 11 (New York: Macmillan, 1937), pp. 524-25. See also Harold Lasswell,
"Political and Psychological Warfare," in Daugherty and Janowitz, Psycho-
logical Warfare Casebook, pp. 21-40. Although Lasswell's importance as a
theoretician of social control has been long recognized, it has been brought to
renewed public attention in the United States in recent years largely through
Noam Chomsky's media studies. See Noam Chomsky, Intellectuals and the
State (Leiden, Netherlands: Johan Huizinga-lezing, 1977), pp. 9-10, and "De-
mocracy and the Media," in Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Demo-
cratic Societies (Boston: South End Press, 1989).
20. Robert Barnhart (ed.), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology (New York:
Wilson, 1988), p. 195.
Notes
139
21. Willard Rowland, Politics of TV Violence (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage,
1983), pp. 53-59.
22. My thinking on this point was spurred by Oskar Negt's discussion of
Horkheimer and Adorno in "Mass Media: Tools of Domination or Instruments
of Liberation? Aspects of the Frankfurt School's Communications Analysis,"
New German Critique (Spring 1978): 61-79. 61ff.
23. Chomsky, Intellectuals and the State, pp. 9-10.
24. Joseph Goebbels, Goebbels-Reden, 1932-1945, 2 vols. (Dusseldorf:
Drost, 1972); and Joseph Goebbels Tagebuecker von Joseph Goebbels, Saem-
tliche Fragments, 4 vols., edited by Elke Froehlich (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1987).
For a guide to microfilmed collections of Goebbels' Reichministerium fur Volk-
saufklarung und Propaganda, see U.S. National Archives, Records of the Reich
Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, No. 22 in the Guide to
German Records series, Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Ser-
vice, 1960.
25. L. D. Stokes, 'The Sicherheitsdienst (SD) of the Reichsfuhrer SS and
German Public Opinion, 1939-1941," Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University,
1972; Aryeh Unger, "The Public Opinion Reports of the Nazi Party," POQ
29, no. 4 (Winter 1965-66): 565-82; Arthur Smith, Jr., "Life in Wartime
Germany: Colonel Ohlendorfs Opinion Service," POQ 36, no. 1 (Spring
1972): 72; Heinz Boberach, "Chancen eines Umsturzes in Spiegel der Berichte
des Sicherheitsdienstes," in Juergen Schmaedeke and Peter Steinback (eds.),
Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Piper, 1989). For an
extensive collection of captured reports from Ohlendorfs project, see Sicher-
heitspolizei des SD, Meldungen aus dem Reich, in U.S. National Archives
microfilm of captured German records No. T-71, reel 5.
26. Carsten Klingemann, "Angewandte Soziologieim Nationalsozialismus,"
1999: Zeischrift fur Sozialgeshichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts (January
1989): 25; Christoph Cobet (ed.), Einfuhrung in Fragen an die Soziologie in
Deutschland nach Hitler, 1945 — 1950 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Christoph
Cobet, 1988). For an examination of interlocking problems concerning German
geographical studies of the same period, which overlapped in certain respects
with communication studies, see Mechtild Roessler, Wissenschaft und Lebens-
raum: Geographische Ostforschung in Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Dietrich
Reimer Verlag, 1990).
27. Chris Raymond, "Professor Is Accused of Promulgating Anti-Semitic
Views as Journalist in Germany and U.S. in World War II," Chronicle of
Higher Education, 38, no. 16, December 11, 1991, P.A-10. For Noelle's own
1939 description of her relationship with Nazism, see Elisabeth Noelle, "Fra-
gebogen zur Bearbeitung des Ausnahmeantrages fur die Reichsschrifttumskam-
mer," May 15, 1939, in the collection of the Berlin Document Center.
28. Brett Gary, "Mass Communications Research, the Rockefeller Foun-
140
NOTES
dation and the Imperatives of War 1939-1945," Research Reports from the
Rockefeller Archive Center (North Tarrytown, NY, Spring 1991), p. 3; and
Brett Gary, "American Liberalism and the Problem of Propaganda," Ph.D.
diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1992. Gary's work is the first thorough study,
so far as I am aware, of the important role of the Rockefeller Foundation in
crystallizing paradigms for communication studies.
29. John Marshall (ed.), "Needed Research in Communication" (1940),
folder 2677, box 224, Rockefeller Archives, Pocantico Hills, NY, cited in
Gary, American Liberalism.
30. Gary, "American Liberalism and the Problem of Propaganda."
31. Ladislas Farago, German Psychological Warfare (New York: Putnam,
1941). For a history of the origin of the term, see William Daugherty, "Chang-
ing Concepts," in Daugherty and Janowitz, Psychological Warfare Casebook,
p. 12.
32. Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare, pp. 5-8, 23-37.
33. Ibid., p. 6.
34. Anthony Cave Brown (ed.), The Secret War Report of the OSS (New
York: Berkeley, 1976), pp. 42-63. There is a large literature on the OSS. For
a reliable overview of the agency's activities, including basic data on its es-
tablishment and leadership, see Richard Harris Smith, OSS (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1972).
35. Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare, pp. 7-14; and Edward Lilly, "The
Psychological Strategy Board and Its Predecessors: Foreign Policy Coordination
1938-1953," in Gaetano Vincitorio (ed.), Studies in Modern History (New
York: St. Johns University Press, 1968), p. 346.
36. Kai Bird, The Chairman: John J. McCloy (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1992).
37. Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare, pp. 8-18; for an extended dis-
cussion, see Daniel Lerner, Sykewar: Psychological Warfare Against Germany,
D-Day to VE-Day (New York: George Stewart, 1948).
38. On Poole's role in the establishment of Public Opinion Quarterly, see
Harwood Childs, "The First Editor Looks Back," POQ, 21, no. 1 (Spring
1957): 7-13. On Poole's work at the Foreign Nationalities Branch of the OSS,
see (Anthony Cave Brown (ed.), Secret War Report of the OSS (New York:
Berkley, 1976), chapter 2. On Leighton, see Alexander Leighton, Human Re-
lations in a Changing World (New York: Dutton, 1949). On Mead, see Carleton
Mabee, "Margaret Mead and Behavioral Scientists in World War II: Problems
of Responsibility, Truth and Effectiveness," Journal of the History of the
Behavioral Sciences 23 (January 1987). On Stouffer, see note 49 below. On
Cantril, see Hadley Cantril, "Evaluating the Probable Reactions to the Landing
in North Africa in 1942: A Case Study," POQ, 29, no. 3 (Fall 1965): 400-
410.
39. On Roper and on Elmo Wilson, also of the Roper organization, see Jean
Notes
141
Converse, Survey Research in the United States (Berkeley: University of Cal-
ifornia Press, 1987), pp. 171-72. On Doob and Leites, see Daniel Lerner (ed.).
Propaganda in War and Crisis (New York: George Stewart, 1951), pp. vii-
viii. On Kluckhohn, Leighton, Lowenthal, and Schramm, see Daugherty and
Janowitz, Psychological Warfare Casebook, pp. xiii-xiv. On Speier, Contem-
porary Authors, Vol. 21-24, p. 829. On Barrett, Edward Barrett, Truth Is Our
Weapon (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1953), pp. 31-32. After his death, the
Associated Press identified Barrett as a former member of the OSS, though
Barrett omitted that information from biographical statements published during
his lifetime; see "Edward W. Barrett Dies; Started Columbia Journalism Re-
view, " Washington Post, October 26, 1989. For more on the OWI, see also
Allan Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information
1942-1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978); and Leonard Doob,
"Utilization of Social Scientists in the Overseas Branch of the Office of War
Information," American Political Science Review, 41, no. 4 (August 1947):
649-67.
40. Converse, Survey Research in the United States, pp. 163, 172.
41. Ibid., p. 309.
42. On Leites and Eulau, see Wilbur Schramm, "The Beginnings of Com-
munication Study in the United States," in Everett Rogers and Francis Balle
(eds.), The Media Revolution in America and Western Europe (Norwood, NJ:
Ablex, 1985), p. 205; and Harold Lasswell and Nathan Leites, Language of
Politics (New York: George Stewart, 1949), p. 298.
43. Nathan Leites and Ithiel de Sola Pool, "The Response of Communist
Propaganda," in Lasswell and Leites, Language of Politics, pp. 153, 334.
44. Roger Wimmer and Joseph Dominick, Mass Media Research (Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth, 1987), p. 165.
45. On Paley, Jackson, Padover, Riley, Janowitz, Lerner, and Gurfein, see
Lerner, Sykewar, pp. 439-43. On Davison, see Daugherty and Janowitz, Psy-
chological Warfare Casebook, p. xii. On Shils, see Lerner, Propaganda in
War, p. viii.
46. On Davison and Padover, see Daugherty and Janowitz, Psychological
Warfare Casebook, pp. xii-xiii. On Gurfein and Janowitz, sec Smith, 055,
pp. 86, 217.
47. On Langer, Cater, and Marcuse, see Smith, OSS, pp 17, 23, 25, 217.
On Barrett, see "Edward W. Barrett Dies; Started Columbia Journalism Re-
view." On Becker and Inkeles, see Daugherty and Janowitz, Psychological
Warfare Casebook, pp. xi-xii. For a fascinating early memoir of the role of
psychology and social psychology in OSS training and operations, see William
Morgan, The OSS and I (New York: Norton, 1957).
48. Robin Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961
(New York: Morrow, 1987), pp. 43-44, 79.
49. On Samuel Stouffer's Morale Branch, see Samuel Stouffer, Arthur Lums-
142
NOTES
daine, Marion Lumsdaine, Robin Williams, M. Brewster Smith, Irving Janis,
Shirley Star, and Leonard Cottrell, The American Soldier (Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton University Press, 1949), pp. 3-53; and John Clausen, "Research on the
American Soldier as a Career Contingency," Social Psychology Quarterly 47,
no. 2 (1984): 207-13. On the OSS, see Barry Katz, Foreign Intelligence:
Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services, 1952-1945 (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989): and Bernard David Rifkind,
"OSS and Franco-American Relations 1942-1945" Ph.D. diss., George Wash-
ington University, 1983, pp. 318-36. On psychological operations in the Pacific
theater, see Leighton, Human Relations in a Changing World.
50. Clausen, "Research on the American Soldier."
51. Ibid, p. 210.
52. Ibid., p. 212.
53. Barrett, Truth, p. 31fn.
54. "Edward W. Barrett Dies; Started Columbia Journalism Review."
55. Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt
School and the Institute for Social Research, 1923-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown,
1973); and Katz, Foreign Intelligence, pp. 29ff.
Chapter 3
1. Senate Committee on Military Affairs, Hearings on Science Legislation
(S. 1297), 79th Cong. 1st sess., October-November 1945, Part 4, pp. 899-
902.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid. On the continuum from hot war to cold war in the eyes of leaders
of the U.S. intelligence community, particularly as it pertained to covert op-
erations and psychological warfare, see testimony by Allen Dulles, John V.
Grombach, Rear Adm. Thomas Inglis, Brig. Gen. Hayes Kroner, Lt. Gen.
Hoyt S. Vandenberg, and Peter Vischer. House Committee on Expenditures in
Executive Departments, National Security Act of 1947. June 27, 1947; published
1982 by the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (Washington, DC:
GPO, 1982).
4. Anthony Cave Brown, The Last Hero: Wild Bill Donovan (New York:
Vintage, 1982), pp. 775-84.
5. Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United States (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1987), pp. 180-82.
6. Ibid., pp. 175-85; Samuel Stouffer et al., The American Soldier (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp. 28-29.
7. Alfred Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare: Its Origins (Washington,
DC: National Defense University Press, 1982), p. 40.
8. John Prados, interview with author, December 12, 1989.
Notes
143
9. Maj. Gen. W. G. Wyman, letter to Asst. Chief of Staff G-2, War De-
partment General Staff, "Project to Combat Subversive Activities [in the]
United States," January 15, 1946, U.S. Army P&O 091.412 (section IA, case
7), RG 319, U.S. National Archives, Washington, DC; see also Paddock, U.S.
Army Special Warfare, pp. 42 — 43.
10. Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare, 55-56.
11. Converse, Survey Research in the United States, p. 182. For background
on Allied polling in occupied Germany, see Anna J. Merritt and Richard L.
Merritt (eds.), Public Opinion in Occupied Germany (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1970); and Anna J. Merritt and Richard L. Merritt (eds.), Public
Opinion in Semisovereign Germany (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980).
12. Allan Robert Adler, Litigation under the Federal Freedom of Information
Act and Privacy Act (Washington, DC: American Civil Liberties Foundation,
1990), pp. 42-44.
13. Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare, pp. 69-71.
14. Ibid., pp. 46-47.
15. John Prados, Presidents' Secret Wars (New York: Morrow, 1986), pp.
20-21.
16. Ibid., pp. 20, 27-29.
17. U.S. National Security Council, NSC 4: Coordination of Foreign Infor-
mation Measures (confidential), December 9, 1947, RG 273, U.S. National
Archives, Washington, DC.
18. Edward Barrett, Truth Is Our Weapon (New York: Funk & Wagnalls,
1953).
19. U.S. National Security Council, NSC 4-A: Psychological Operations (top
secret), December 9, 1947, RG 273, U.S. National Archives, Washington,
DC.
20. U.S. National Security Council, NSC 1012: Office of Special Projects
(originally top secret, now declassified), June 18, 1948, RG 273, U.S. National
Archives, Washington, DC.
21. Intricate and seemingly contradictory conceptual structures of this type
are far more common in affairs of state than is generally recognized; indeed,
they are probably inherent in modern political communication systems. A par-
ticularly grotesque example of this can be seen in Nazi Germany's sublanguages
used to manage the extermination of Jews. There, the state employed massive
public information campaigns to mobilize the German bureaucracy and public
for persecutory operations such as expropriation of Jewish property, "petty"
(i.e., nonlethal) discrimination, and mass roundups of Jews for deportation.
The truth — that the deportees were to be murdered — was aggressively denied
by the Nazi information authorities, however, who claimed that the deportees
were simply being relocated to work camps.
But despite the denials, small armies of personnel were required to actually
144
NOTES
manage the death camps, deliver the railroad shipments of Jews, make use of
data derived from fatal experiments on work camp prisoners, and so on. These
groups soon developed complex, specialized vocabularies of euphemisms and
rationalizations in order to discuss their work without directly contradicting the
official claim that deported persons were surviving and even prospering.
In time, knowledge of the exterminations seeped through German society,
spread by rumors, jokes, foreign radio broadcasts, and the accidental revelations
inherent in any large-scale program. The net result was both widespread knowl-
edge of the genocidal efforts of Hitler's government and, simultaneously, an
institutionalized and internalized denial of precisely the same knowledge. For
many Germans, this belief structure proved to be quite ornate and resilient.
Roughly similar psychological and linguistic structures seem to have played
a role in certain phases of Turkish Ittyhad efforts to exterminate Armenians
during World War I, in atrocities during Stalin's rule in the Soviet Union, and
in U.S. exploitation of former Nazis in intelligence operations. There are many
obvious differences, of course, between the psychological and linguistic dy-
namics of atrocities and those of psychological warfare projects. Nonetheless,
there are enough similarities to suggest that euphemistic "cover stories" are
integral to much of modern political communication.
22. U.S. National Security Council, NSC 1012 On the importance of euphe-
mism during mass crimes, see Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European
Jews (New York: Harper, 1961), pp. 216, 566, 652.
23. Prados, Presidents' Secret Wars, p. 33.
24. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect
to Intelligence Activities, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Foreign and
Military Intelligence, 94th Cong. 2nd sess., Part 4 Washington, DC: GPO,
1976), pp. 29-31. Hereinafter cited as Senate Select Committee.
25. Ibid., pp. 29-36; Prados, Presidents' Secret Wars, p. 81.
26. Col. S. F. Griffin, "Memorandum to the Record: NSC 10 (Psychological
Warfare Organization)" (top secret), June 3, 1948; quote concerning mission
from U.S. National Security Council, NSC 10/2.
27. Senate Select Committee, pp. 128-32.
28. Quoted in Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare, p. 75.
29. See, for example, "U.S. Rejects Charges of Anti-Polish Acts," De-
partment of State Bulletin (February 23, 1953): 304-5.
Chapter 4
1. Examples of articles with this characteristic include John A. Pollard,
"Words Are Cheaper Than Blood," POQ 9, no. 3 (Fall 1945): 283ff. (review
of the work of the Office of War Information); Mrs. R. Hart Phillips, "The
Future of American Propaganda in Latin America," POQ 9, no. 3 (Fall 1945):
Notes
145
305ff. (plea for expanded U.S. propaganda operations in the region); and Ed-
ward A. Shils and Morris Janowitz, "Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehr-
macht in World War II," POQ 12, no. 2 (Summer 1948): 280 (elaboration of
reference group theory on the basis of evidence drawn from psychological
operations against enemy military forces). Public Opinion Quarterly's, annual
index typically appears as an unpaginated annex to the bound annual volumes
of the journal. Unless otherwise noted, all unattributed articles in this chapter
appeared in POQ.
For background on DeWitt Poole, see Who Was Who, Vol. 3, p. 692; and
Sig Mickelson, America's Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and
Radio Liberty (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp. 24,41,60, 259. Poole eventually
became president of the Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored National Com-
mittee for a Free Europe.
2. See, for example, Warren B. Walsh's reviews of M. Sayers and A. Kahn's
text The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War against Russia, 10, no. 4 (Winter
1946): 596-97, or of Henry Wallace's text Soviet Asia Mission, 11, no. 1
(Spring 1947): 135.
3. As used here, "financially dependent" upon psychological warfare con-
tracting means deriving a substantial fraction of one's personal income or the
backing for important professional projects from government efforts to apply
social science to national security missions. Examples from Public Opinion
Quarterly's board of editors (later called its advisory board) include Hadley
Cantril, Leonard Cottrell, W. Phillips Davison, George Gallup, Harold Las-
swell, Paul Lazarsfeld, Rensis Likert, DeWitt Poole, Elmo Roper, Wilbur
Schramm, Frank Stanton, Frederick Stephan, Samuel Stouffer, and Elmo Wil-
son. See the text and notes in Chapters 5, 6, and 8 of this book for specific
projects and sources.
4. Major Paul C. Bosse, "Polling Civilian Japanese on Saipan," 9, no. 2
(Summer 1945): 176.
5. Pollard, "Words Are Cheaper Than Blood," p. 283.
6. Lt. Andie Knutson, "Japanese Opinion Surveys: The Special Need and
the Special Difficulties," 9, no. 3, (Fall 1945): 313.
7. Phillips, "The Future of American Propaganda in Latin America," p.
305.
8. Nat Schmulowitz and Lloyd Luckmann, "Foreign Policy by Propaganda
Leaflets," 9, no. 4 (Winter 1945): 428, and Jacob Freid, "The OWI's Moscow
Desk," 10, no. 2 (Summer 1946): 156.
9. Ferdinand Hermens, "The Danger of Stereotypes in Viewing Germany,"
9, no. 4 (Winter 1945): 418, M. I. Gurfein and Morris Janowitz, "Trends in
Wehrmacht Morale," 10, no. 1 (Spring 1946): 78, Herbert von Strempel,
"Confessions of a German Propagandist," 10, no. 2 (Summer 1946): 216,
Elizabeth Zerner, "German Occupation and Anti-Semitism in France," 12, no.
146
NOTES
2 (Summer 1948): 258, Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz, "Cohesion and
Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II," 12, no. 2 (Summer 1948):
280, Morris Janowitz (reviewer), "Attitudes of German Prisoners of War" and
"Observations of the Characteristics and Distribution of German Nazis," 13,
no. 2 (Summer 1949): 343, 346.
10. Nat Schmulowitz and Lloyd Luckmann, "Foreign Policy by Propaganda
Leaflets," 9, no. 4 (Winter 1945): 428, Boris Joffe, "The Post Card— A Tool
of Propaganda," 11, no. 4 (Winter 1947): 613, Marin Hertz, "Some Psycho-
logical Lessons from Leaflet Propaganda in World War II," 13, no. 3 (Fall
1949): 471.
11. Capt. John Jamieson, "Books and the Soldier," 9, no. 2 (Summer 1945):
320, Arnold Rose, "Bases of American Military Morale in World War II," 9,
no. 4 (Winter 1945): 411, Karl Ettinger, "Foreign Propaganda in America"
10, no. 3 (Fall 1946): 329, Leo Crespi and G. Schofield Shapleigh, " 'The'
Veteran — A Myth," 10, no. 3 (Fall 1946): 361, John Jamieson, "Censorship
and the Soldier," 11, no. 3 (Fall 1947): 367, Paul Lazarsfeld, "The American
Soldier: An Expository Review," 13, no. 3 (Fall 1949): 377.
12. Reviews of The Great Conspiracy 10, no. 4 (Winter 1946): 596, Weapon
of Silence, 11, no. 1 (Spring 1947): 133, Mass Persuasion: The Social Psy-
chology of a War Bond Drive, 11, no. 2 (Summer 1947): 266, Paper Bullets:
A Brief History of Psychological Warfare in World War II, 11 no. 3 (Fall 1947)
Rebel at Large [George Creel memoirs] 11, no. 4 (Winter 1947): 626, Psy-
chological Warfare, 12, no. 2 (Summer 1948): 331, Public Opinion and Pro-
paganda 12, no. 3 (Fall 1948): 496, The Goebbels Diaries, 12, no. 3 (Fall
1948): 500, Persuade or Perish, 12, no. 3 (Fall 1948): 511, Overseas Infor-
mation Service of the United States Government, 13, no. 1 (Spring 1949): 136,
Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy, 13, no. 3 (Fall 1949): 524,
Publizistik im Dritten Reich, 13, no. 4 (Winter 1949): 692.
13. Jacob Freid, "The OWI's Moscow Desk," 10, no. 2 (Summer 1946):
156, George Counts, "Soviet Version of American History," 10, no. 3 (Fall
1946): 321, Martin Kriesberg, "Soviet News in the New York Times," 10, no.
4 (Winter 1946): 540, Dick Fitzpatrick, "Telling the World about America,"
10, no. 4 (Winter 1946): 582; "Public Opinion Inside the USSR," 11, no. 1
(Spring 1947): 5, Alexander Dallin, "America Through Soviet Eyes," 11, no.
1 (Spring 1947): 26, W. Phillips Davison, "An Analysis of the Soviet-Con-
trolled Berlin Press," 11, no. 1 (Spring 1947): 40, O. W. Riegel, "Hungary:
Proving Ground for Soviet-American Relations," 11, no. 1 (Spring 1947): 58,
H. M. Spitzer, "Presenting America in American Propaganda," 11, no. 2
(Summer 1947): 213, Richard Burkhardt, "The Soviet Union in American
School Textbooks," 11, no. 4 (Winter 1947): 567, Hans Speier, "The Future
of Psychological Warfare," 12, no. 1 (Spring 1948): 5, Jan Stapel and W. J.
deJonge, "Why Vote Communist?" 12, no. 3 (Fall 1948): 390, Whitman
Notes
147
Bassow, "Izvestia Looks Inside USA," 12, no. 3 (Fall 1948): 430, Martin
Kriesberg, "Cross Pressures and Attitudes: A Study of the Influence of Con-
flicting Propaganda on Opinions Regarding American-Soviet Relations," 13,
no. 1 (Spring 1949): 5, Henry Halpern, "Soviet Attitudes Toward Public Opin-
ion Research in Germany," 13, no. 1 (Spring 1949): 117, Louis Nemzer, "The
Soviet Friendship Societies," 13, no. 2 (Summer 1949): 265, Kenneth Olson,
"The Development of the Czechoslovak Propaganda Administration," 13, no.
4 (Winter 1949): 607, Leonard Doob, "The Strategies of Psychological War-
fare," 13, no. 4 (Winter 1949): 635.
14. "Book Reviews," 10, no. 1 (Spring 1946): 99-103, with quotes drawn
from p. 100.
15. Speier, "The Future of Psychological Warfare," pp. 5-18.
16. See index entries for "Propaganda" and "Psychological Warfare" in
the unnumbered index pages appended to the bound volumes of POQ.
17. Donald McGranahan, "U.S. Psychological Warfare Policy," 10, no. 3
(Fall 1946): 446-50.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. U.S. National Security Council, NSC 4 and NSC 4-A. On Wisner's role
in development of psychological warfare policy while serving as chief of the
Occupied Areas Division at the Department of State, see SANACC Case No.
395, "Utilization of Refugees from the USSR in the US National Interest,"
March- July 1948 (top secret, now declassified and available on microfilm from
Scholarly Resources, Wilmington, DE). On Speier's post at the Occupied Areas
Division at the Department of State, see Contemporary Authors, Vol. 21-24,
pp. 829-30, and Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, Vol. 9, pp. 463-
64.
21. Speier, "The Future of Psychological Warfare," pp. 5, 8.
22. Ibid., pp. 11, 14, 18.
23. U.S. National Security Council, NSC 4 and NSC 4-A; see also House
Select Committee on Intelligence, in Village Voice, "Special Supplement: The
CIA Report the President Doesn't Want You to Read," February 16 and 22,
1976.
24. Warren B. Walsh's reviews include those of M. Sayers and A. Kahn's
text The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Russia, 10, no. 4 (Winter
1946) : 596-97, of Henry Wallace's Soviet Asia Mission, 11, no. 1 (Spring
1947) : 135, of William van Narvig's East of the Iron Curtain, 11, no. 2 (Summer
1947): 269, of John R. Deane's The Strange Alliance, 11, no. 3 (Fall 1947):
463, and of George Moorad's Behind the Iron Curtain, 11, no. 3 (Fall 1947):
463-64.
25. P. Luzzatto Fegiz, "Italian Public Opinion," 11, no. 1 (Spring 1947):
92-96.
148
NOTES
26. Felix Oppenheim, "The Prospects of Italian Democracy," 11, no. 4
(Winter 1947): 572-580.
27. Charles A. H. Thompson, review, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy,
13, no. 2 (Summer 1949): 330; and C. Edda Martinez and Edward A. Suchman,
"Letters from America and the 1948 Election in Italy," 14, no. 1 (Spring
1950): 111-25.
28. Psychological Strategy Board, Panel C. Reduction of Communist
Strength and Influence in France and Italy (top secret), October 26, 1951,
records of the Psychological Strategy Board, Harry S. Truman Library, In-
dependence, MO; James Miller, "Taking Off the Gloves: The United States
and the Italian Elections of 1948," Diplomatic History, 7, no. 1 (Winter
1983): 35-55; James Miller, The United States and Italy, 1940-1950 (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986); James Miller, "Roughhouse
Diplomacy: The United States Confronts Italian Communism, 1945-58,"
Storia delta Relazioni Internazionali 5, no. 2 (1989):279-31 1; Arnaldo Cortesi
and "Observer," "Two Vital Case Histories," in Lester Markel (ed.), Public
Opinion and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper Brothers/Council on Foreign
Relations, 1949), pp. 197-212 (sanitized, but with contemporary Italian and
French case studies).
29. Counts, "Soviet Version of American History," 321-28; and Alfred
McClung Lee, "Are Only the Russians Guilty?" 11, no. 1 (Spring 1947): 173.
Lee cites as evidence of his assertion data in Kriesberg's "Soviet News in the
New York Times," p. 540.
30. W. Phillips Davison, "Preferences of POQ Readers," 12, no. 3 (Fall
1948): 579-80.
31. Frederick W. Williams, "Regional Attitudes on International Coopera-
tion," 9, no. 1 (Spring 1945): 38-50.
32. Ibid., p. 38.
33. Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United States (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1987), pp. 152-54, 165. Converse also notes an
earlier example of the role of these confidential surveys in shaping the president's
highly controversial strategy for promoting U.S. support for England in the
years leading up to Pearl Harbor.
34. For background on Poole, see Who Was Who, Vol. 3, p. 692; Mickelson,
America's Other Voice, pp. 24, 41, 60; and Christopher Simpson, Blowback
(New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988), pp. 134, 217-34 passim. See also
Harwood Childs, "The First Editor Looks Back," 21, no. 1 (Spring 1957): 7,
for Child's recollections on Poole's role in the founding of Public Opinion
Quarterly.
35. For source material on Stanton's role with Radio Free Europe, see Mick-
elson, America's Other Voice, p. 124; and U.S. General Accounting Office,
Notes
149
U.S. Government Monies Provided to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty,
report no. 173239, May 25, 1972, p. 79.
36. On Free's wartime career, see Converse, Survey Research in the United
States, pp. 152-54; on his Central Intelligence Agency grant, see John Crewdson
and Joseph Treaster, "Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by CIA," New
York Times, December 26, 1977.
37. Association officers or editorial panel members who served with both
groups included Samuel Stouffer, John W. Riley, and Leonard Cottrell.
38. Herbert Goldhamer, "Public Opinion and Personality" (p. 346), Hans
Speier, "Historical Development of Public Opinion" (p. 376), Samuel Stouffer,
"Some Observations on Study Design" (p. 355), and Leo Lowenthal, "His-
torical Perspectives of Popular Culture" (p. 323); each in American Journal of
Sociology 56, no. 1 (January 1950). Lowenthal specifically cites his Voice of
America work in support of his thesis; see p. 324.
39. Albert Biderman and Elizabeth Crawford, Political Economics of Social
Research: The Case of Sociology (Springfield, VA: Clearinghouse for Federal
Scientific and Technological Information, 1968), p. 5.
Chapter 5
1. Calculated from figures reported in National Science Foundation, Federal
Funds for Science (Washington, DC: GPO, 1953), pp. 39-40.
2. National Science Foundation, Federal Funds for Science (Washington,
DC: GPO, 1960), pp. 66-67. One 1962 survey of approximately two hundred
sociologists and anthropologists found that 44 percent answered affirmatively
when asked whether any part of their research, teaching, study, or consulting
during the previous year had been underwritten by the government. Harold
Orlans, The Effects of Federal Programs on Higher Education (Washington,
DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1962), p. 98. By the 1960s, the federal gov-
ernment had become virtually the sole source of funding for large-scale social
research in the $100,000 and over range. Albert Biderman and Elizabeth Craw-
ford, Political Economics of Social Research: The Case of Sociology (Spring-
field, VA: Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technological Information,
1968), p. 9.
3. Harry Alpert, "Opinion and Attitude Surveys in the U.S. Government,"
POQ 16, no. 1 (Spring 1952): 33-41. Alpert states in the introduction of
this article that virtually all military intelligence-and propaganda-related stud-
ies have been excluded from the scope of his article. For data concerning
military contracting, see Lyle Lanier, "The Psychological and Social Sciences
in the National Military Establishment," American Psychologist 4, no. 5
(May 1949): 127-47. George Croker (U.S. Air Force Human Resources
150
NOTES
Research Institute), "Some Principles Regarding the Utilization of Social
Science Research Within the Military," pp. 112-25, and Howard E. Page
(Psychological Sciences Division, Office of Naval Research), "Research Uti-
lization," pp. 126-35, both in Case Studies in Bringing Behavioral Science
into Use (Stanford: Institute for Communication Research, 1961), pp. 112 —
35; Erin Hubbert and Herbert Rosenberg, Opportunities for Federally Spon-
sored Social Science Research (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Maxwell
Graduate School, 1951); Raymond Bowers, "The Military Establishment,"
in Paul Lazarsfeld, William Sewell, and Harold Wilensky (eds.), The Uses
of Sociology (New York: Basic Books, 1967), pp. 234ff; Leonard Mead,
"Psychology at the Special Devices Center, Office of Naval Research,"
American Psychologist 4, no. 4 (April 1949): 97ff (see pp. 98-100 for
discussion of television-based experiments with "rapid mass learning");
Charles Bray, "The Effects of Government Contract Work on Psychology,"
and John T. Wilson, "Government Support of Research and Its Influence on
Psychology," both in American Psychologist 7, no. 12 (December 1952):
710-18; Gene Lyons, "The Growth of National Security Research," Journal
of Politics 25, no. 3 (1963): 489-508; Irving Louis Horowitz, "Why the
DOD Is No. 1," Trans-Action 5, no. 6 (May 1968): 32.
4. Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United States (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1987), pp. 340-41.
5. Ibid., pp. 353, 357.
6. Clyde Kluckhohn, Alex Inkeles, and Raymond Bauer, Strategic Psycho-
logical and Sociological Strengths and Vulnerabilities of the Soviet Social Sys-
tem (Cambridge, MA: Russian Research Center, Harvard University, 1954;
USAF contract no. 33 [038]-12909), pp. 20-22, and Annex 1 (on ISR role)
and pp. 360-68 (on use in strategic air offensive on the Soviet Union). See
also Tami Davis Biddle, "Handling the Soviet Threat: Arguments for Preven-
tative War and Compellence in the Early Cold War Period," paper presented
at the annual convention of the Society for Historians of American Foreign
Relations, 1988; and Christopher Simpson, Blowback (New York: Weidenfeld
&Nicolson, 1988), p. 138.
7. Quoted in Converse, Survey Research in the United States, pp. 353, 531
note 17.
8. Ibid., pp. 309, 327. See also National Opinion Research Center (Charles
Mack), Bibliography of Publications, 1941-1960 (Chicago: NORC, 1961), and
Supplement 1961-1971 (Chicago: NORC, 1972); James Davis, Studies of Social
Change Since 1948, 2 vols. (Chicago: NORC, 1976).
9. Converse, Survey Research in the United States, pp. 321 — 22. For details
on the Department of State affair, see House Committee on Government Op-
erations, State Department Opinion Polls, 85th Cong., 1st sess., June-July
1957 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1957). For an example of the impact of these
Notes
151
studies, see the State Department's Policy Planning Staff internal discussion
concerning U.S. public opinion on atomic warfare in the wake of the first Soviet
atomic weapons test. Carlton Savage to George F. Kennan, untitled memo
regarding first use of atomic bomb, December 21, 1949 (top secret), in Paul
Nitze Papers, Policy Planning Staff files, box 50, RG 59, U.S. National Ar-
chives, Washington, DC.
10. Converse, Survey Research in the United States, pp. 309, 327.
11. Charles Fritz and Eli Marks, "The NORC Studies of Human Behavior
in Disasters," Journal of Social Issues 10, no. 3 (1954): 26-41; Rue Bucher,
"Blame and Hostility in Disaster" American Journal of Sociology 62, no. 5
(1957); Elihu Katz, "The Night the Sirens Wailed in Chicago," Chicago Sun-
Times, April 24, 1960. For an example of BASR studies in the same area, see
Fred Ikle, "The Social Versus the Physical Effects from Nuclear Bombing,"
Scientific Monthly 78, no. 3 (March 1954): 182-87.
12. For discussion of these studies as elements in nuclear war planning, see
Jack Hirshleifer, Disaster and Recovery: A Historical Survey (Santa Monica,
CA: RAND Corporation, RM-3079-PR, 1963).
13. Converse, Survey Research in the United States, pp. 269, 506-7 note
42.
14. Ibid., pp. 275-76, 506 note 37.
15. Ibid., p. 506 note 37.
16. Kluckhohn, Inkeles, and Bauer, Strategic Psychological and Sociological
Strengths and Vulnerabilities, p. 402.
17. On VOA study history, see Daniel Lerner with Lucille Pevsner, The
Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958), pp. 79-80. On
U.S. psychological warfare in the Middle East, see William Blum, The CIA:
A Forgotten History (London: Zed, 1986), pp. 31-36, 67-76, 96-107; and
Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA
(New York: Pocket Books, 1979), pp. 106, 161, 431.
18. John Prados, Presidents' Secret Wars (New York: Morrow, 1986), pp.
94-98 (on Iran); Myron Smith, The Secret Wars, Vol. 2 (Santa Barbara, CA:
ABC-Clio, 1981), pp. xxxiii, xxxv (on Egypt).
19. Converse, Survey Research in the United States, p. 290.
20. Lerner and Pevsner, Passing of Traditional Society, pp. 81, 449 notes
1-5.
21. Lanier, "The Psychological and Social Sciences," pp. 131-33; and
"Psychological News and Notes," American Psychologist 3, no. 12 (December
1948): 559.
22. Lanier, "The Psychological and Social Sciences," pp. 131-32.
23. The precise figure apparently remains classified at this writing, and its
size obviously depends in part on how broadly the Department of Defense
defined "social science" in 1949. The figure reported here is calculated from
152
NOTES
data presented by Lanier, who was at that time chair of the Committee on
Human Resources' Panel on Human Engineering and Psychophysiology. Lan-
ier's data were cleared by the Office of the Secretary of Defense prior to release
(ibid., p. 131). Lanier's estimate is considerably higher than that offered by
some other contemporary authors, notably Hubbert and Rosenberg, Opportu-
nities for Federally Sponsored Social Science Research. It is, however, roughly
consistent with figures offered by John Wilson of the National Science Foun-
dation in "Government Support of Research," p. 715.
24. Lanier, "The Psychological and Social Sciences," p. 132.
25. On panel membership, see "Psychological News and Notes," p. 559.
On Speier, see Hans Speier, "Psychological Warfare Reconsidered," RAND
paper no.' 196, February 5, 1951; Hans Speier, "International Political Com-
munication: Elite and Mass," World Politics (April 1952 [RAND paper no. P-
270]); Hans Speier and W. Phillips Davison, "Psychological Aspects of Foreign
Policy," RAND paper no. P-615, December 15, 1954. On RAND's origins
see Fred Kaplan, "Scientists at War: The Birth of the RAND Corporation,"
American Heritage 34 (June-July 1983): 49-64.
26. Alexander Leighton, Human Relations in a Changing World (New York:
Dutton, 1949).
27. Carl Hovland, Arthur Lumsdaine, and Fred Sheffield, Experiments in
Mass Communication (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949). This is the
third volume in the American Soldier series.
28. "Psychological News and Notes."
29. Ibid.
30. On Dollard's and Gardner's roles with committee, ibid. On Gardner's
role at Carnegie Corporation, see Who's Who, 1974-1975, p. 1099. On the
Carnegie role in the American Soldier series, see Samuel Stouffer et al., The
American Soldier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 26.
31. Charles O'Connell, "Social Structure and Science: Soviet Studies at
Harvard," Ph.D. diss. UCLA, 1990, pp. 178-79.
32. John Clausen, "Research on the American Soldier as a Career Contin-
gency," Social Psychology Quarterly 47, no. 2 (1984): 212.
33. For Cantril's version, see Hadley Cantril, The Human Dimension: Ex-
periences in Policy Research (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,
1967), pp. 131-32, 145. For the New York Times version, see John M. Crewdson
and Joseph Treaster, "Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the CIA,"
New York Times, December 26, 1977.
34. Thomas Sorenson, The Word War: The Story of American Propaganda
(New York: Harper, 1968), p. 46.
35. Clausen, "Research on the American Soldier," p. 212.
36. "Cottrell, Leonard Slater," Contemporary Authors, Vol. 107, p. 100.
Notes
153
37. Leonard Cottrell, "Social Research and Psychological Warfare," So-
ciometry 23, no. 2 (June 1960): 103-19, with quote at p. 119.
38. See, for example, Wilbur Schramm's work for the National Security
Council's highly secret Operations Coordinating Board, mentioned in Robert
Holt, Radio Free Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958),
p. 236. For related material, see "Briefing Paper — Schramm Meeting," August
1, 1956 (formerly secret, declassified 1991), Wilbur Schramm files, USIA
Library Historical Collection, Washington, D.C.
39. Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free
Press, 1968), pp. 504-5.
Chapter 6
1. John Riley and Wilbur Schramm, The Reds Take a City: The Communist
Occupation of Seoul (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1951);
John Riley, Wilbur Schramm, and Frederick Williams, "Flight from Com-
munism: A Report on Korean Refugees," POQ 15, no. 2 (Summer 1951): 274
(unless otherwise noted, all unattributed articles in this chapter appeared in
POQ); Wilbur Schramm, F.E.C. Psychological Warfare Operations: Radio
(Washington and Baltimore: Operations Research Office, John Hopkins Uni-
versity, 1952, ORO-T-20 [FEC], secret security information). On USIA trans-
lation and distribution of the Reds Take a City text, see Raymond Bowers,
"The Military Establishment," in Paul Lazarsfeld, William Sewell, and Harold
Wilensky (eds.), The Uses of Sociology (New York: Basic Books, 1967), p.
245.
Several other prominent communication researchers drew on the same body
of refugee interviews to prepare domestic propaganda during the Korean con-
flict. See W. Phillips Davison, "The Lesser Evil," Reader's Digest 58 (June
1951): 97-100. Davison's article was first prepared as RAND Corporation study
no. P-194 (1951).
2. J. MayoneStycos, "Patterns of Communications in a Rural Greek Village"
16, no. 1 (Spring 1952): 59-70, J. Mayone Stycos, "Interviewer Training in
Another Culture" 17, no. 2 (Summer 1952): 236-46, Benjamin Ringer and
David Sills, "Political Extremists in Iran: A Secondary Analysis of Commu-
nications Data" 17, no. 4 (Winter 1952-53): 689-702, J. Mayone Stycos,
" Further Observations on the Recruitment and Training of Interviewers in Other
Cultures" 19, no. 1 (Spring 1955): 68-78, Patricia Kendall, "The Ambivalent
Character of Nationalism among Egyptian Professionals" 20, no. 1 (Spring
1956): 277, Morroe Berger (review), The Passing of Traditional Society 22,
no. 3 (Fall 1958): 425.
3. For example, Eric Marder, "Linear Segments: A Technique for Scalogram
154
NOTES
Analysis" 16, no. 3 (Fall 1952): 417-31, Samuel Stouffer, Edgar Borgatta,
David Hays, and Andrew Henry, "A Technique for Improving Cumulative
Scales" vol. 16, no. 2 (Summer 1952): 273-90, Andrew Henry, "A Method
for Classifying Non-Scale Response Patterns in a Guttman Scale" 16, no. 1
(Spring 1952): 94-106, Edgar Borgatta and David Hays, "The Limitations on
the Arbitrary Classification of Non-Scale Response Patterns in a Guttman Scale"
16, no. 3(Fall 1952): 410-16, Edgar Borgotta, "An Error Ratio for Scalogram
Analysis" 19, no. 1 (Spring 1955): 96-99.
4. See Brutus Coste, "Propaganda to Eastern Europe," 14, no. 4 (Winter
1950): 639-66. Coste was an employee of the National Committee for a Free
Europe and later of the Assembly of Captive European Nations, both of which
were financed almost exclusively by the CIA.
5. Sorenson, The Word War, pp. 21-30.
6. Denis McQuail, Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction (London
and Beverly Hills: Sage, 1987), p. 5.
7. Edith Bjorklund, "Research and Evaluation Programs of the U.S. Infor-
mation Agency and the Overseas Information Center Libraries," Library Quar-
terly (October 1968): 414; and Herbert Schiller, The Mind Managers (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1973), pp. 140, 205.
8. "Proceedings of the American Association for Public Opinion Research
at the Sixth Annual Conference on Public Opinion Research, Princeton, June
22-25, 1951," 15, no. 4 (Winter 1951-52): 768ff. For Davison panel, see
AAPOR Conference Proceedings, "Contributions of Opinion Research to Psy-
chological Warfare," 15, no. 4 (Winter 1951-52): 801-5. (Not to be confused
with the Klapper and Lowenthal article with a very similar title elsewhere in
the same issue.)
9. AAPOR Conference Proceedings, "Contributions of Opinion Research to
Psychological Warfare," p. 802.
10. Joseph Klapper and Leo Lowenthal, "The Contributions of Opinion
Research to the Evaluation of Psychological Warfare," 15, no. 4 (Winter 1951):
651.
11. AAPOR Conference Proceedings, "Contributions of Opinion Research
to Psychological Warfare," p. 804.
12. AAPOR Conference Proceedings, "Opinion and Communications Re-
search in National Defense," 15, no. 4 (Winter 1951-52): 794.
13. AAPOR Conference Proceedings, "Presidential Session," 15, no. 4
(Winter 1951-52): 795.
14. For overviews of Lowenthal's life and writings, see Martin Jay, The Di-
alectical Imagination: History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social
Research 1923-1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), passim; Leo Lowenthal, An
Unmastered Past: Autobiographical Reflections of Leo Lowenthal Martin Jay
Notes
155
(ed.), (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Leo Lowenthal, Liter-
ature and Mass Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1984); and Hanno
Hardt, "The Conscience of Society: Leo Lowenthal and Communication Re-
search," Journal of Communication 41, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 65-85.
15. Richard Crossman (ed.), The God That Failed (New York: Harper Broth-
ers, 1949).
16. On disillusionment, see Crossman, The God That Failed, essays by Arthur
Koestler, Richard Wright, Stephen Spender, etc.; John P. Diggins, Up from
Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual History (New
York: Harper & Row, 1975), on Max Eastman, Sidney Hook, James Burnham,
and others; Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural
Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: Free
Press, 1989), on Jay Lovestone and CIA-sponsored propaganda operations
aimed at intellectuals.
17. Joseph Klapper and Leo Lowenthal, "Contributions of Opinion Research
to Psychological Warfare," 15, no. 4 (Winter 1951) 651-62.
18. Lowenthal, An Unmastered Past, pp. 93-94.
19. Ibid., pp. 81-110 passim.
20. Hardt, "The Conscience of Society."
21. Charles Glock, "The Comparative Study of Communication and Opinion
Formation," 16, no. 4, (Winter 1952-53): 512-26.
22. Bureau of Social Science Research (Stanley Bigman, project director),
"An Outline for the Study of National Communication Systems," prepared for
the Office of Research and Evaluation, USIA, November 1953, BSSR Archives,
series II, box 4, project no. 642, p. 1. University of Maryland Libraries Special
Collections, College Park.
23. Glock, "The Comparative Study of Communication," p. 522.
24. Bureau of Social Science Research, "An Outline for the Study of National
Communication Systems."
25. Bureau of Social Science Research, "Mass Communication in Eastern
Europe," BSSR Archives, series II, box 10, project no. 303, University of
Maryland Libraries Special Collections, College Park. See also BSSR, "Hun-
gary," series II, box 11, project no. 303, in the same archive.
26. Bureau of Social Science Research, "Public Opinion in Philippines Sur-
vey," BSSR Archives, series II, box 3, project no. 627, University of Maryland
Special Libraries Collections, College Park.
27. Bureau of Social Science Research (Lawrence Krader and Ivor Wayne,
project directors), "The Kazakhs: A Background Study for Psychological War-
fare" (Task KAZPO, technical report no. 23, November 1955), BSSR Archives,
series II, box 4, project no. 649, University of Maryland Libraries Special
Collections, College Park.
156
NOTES
28. Ringer and Sills, "Political Extremists in Iran." On the coup d'etat in
Iran, see John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pp. 260-64.
29. Alex Inkeles, "Soviet Reactions to the Voice of America," pp. 612-
17; Paul Massing, "Communist References to the Voice of America," 618-
22; Peter Rossi and Raymond Bauer, ' 'Some Patterns of Soviet Communications
Behavior," pp. 653-65— all in 16, no. 4 (Winter 1952-53).
30. Harold Mendelsohn and Werner Cahnman, "Communist Broadcasts to
Italy," 16, no. 4 (Winter 1952-53): 671-80.
31. Richard Sheldon and John Dutkowski, "Are Soviet Satellite Refugee
Interviews Projectable?" 16, no. 4 (Winter 1952-53): 579-94.
32. Daniel Lerner, "International Coalitions and Communication Content:
The Case of Neutralism," 16, no. 4 (Winter 1952): 681-88, with quotes drawn
from pp. 687, 684, 688, respectively.
33. Marjorie Fiske and Leo Lowenthal, "Some Problems in the Adminis-
tration of International Communications Research," 16, no. 2 (Summer 1952):
149-59, with quote drawn from p. 150.
34. "Special Issue on International Communications Research; Leo Low-
enthal, Guest Editor," 16, no. 4 (Winter 1952-53). POQ's, indexes are not
paginated; for article counts see under "Propaganda." No index term for "Psy-
chological Warfare" appears in the 1952 index, although the journal employs
that term during both previous and later years.
35. Wilbur Schramm (ed.) The Process and Effects of Mass Communication
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1954).
36. Ibid., p. 469 (for Glock). See also chapters by Bruce Lannes Smith,
Ralph White, and W. Philips Davison and Alexander George, each of which
first appeared in the Lowenthal special issue of POQ.
37. University of Maryland, College Park Libraries, Historical Manuscripts
and Archives Department, Guide to the Archives of the Bureau of Social Science
Research (College Park: University of Maryland, n.d. [1987?]).
38. Account list cards, BSSR Archives, series I, box 13; Bureau of Social
Science Research (Robert Bower), "Kazakhstan and the Kazakhs: Targets and
Vulnerabilities in Psychological Warfare," working paper for Psychological
Warfare Division, Human Resources Research Office, December 1954, BSSR
Archives, series II, box 5, project 649; Lawrence Krader and Ivor Wayne,
"The Kazakhs: A Background Study for Psychological Warfare."
On prisoner interrogation, see Albert Biderman, Barbara Heller, and Paula
Epstein, A Selected Bibliography on Captivity Behavior, BSSR Research report
339-1, February 1961, U.S. Air Force contract no. AF 49(638)727, BSSR
Archives, series II, box 14, project 339; Bureau of Social Science Research
(Louis Gottschalk, MD). "The Use of Drugs in Information-Seeking Inter-
Notes
157
views," December 1958, BSSR Archives, series II, box 11, project 322, Uni-
versity of Maryland Libraries Special Collections, College Park.
39. Account list cards, BSSR Archives, series I, box 13; and Albert Biderman,
"Social-Psychological Needs and 'Involuntary' Behavior as Illustrated by Com-
pliance in Interrogation," 23, no, 2 Sociometry (June 1960): 120. For CIA role
of Human Ecology Fund, see John Marks, Search for the "Manchurian Can-
didate": The CIA and Mind Control (New York: Times Books, 1979), pp.
147-63.
40. Account list cards, BSSR Archives, series I, box 13: Stanley Bigman,
Are We Hitting the Target?: A Manual of Evaluation Research Methods for
USIE (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State [Official Use Only], 1951),
USSR Archives, series n, box 3, project no. 627; "Public Opinion in the
Philippines," BSSR Archives, series II, box 3; "International Seminar to Be
Held in Saigon," Times of Vietnam, December 13, 1958, p. 2, BSSR Archives,
scries I, box 13. The BSSR Archives is held by University of Maryland Libraries
Special Collections, College Park.
41. Author's estimate based on BSSR Account list cards.
42. BSSR, Are We Hitting the Target? BSSR, "Public Opinion in the Phil-
ippines."
43. BSSR, Are We Hitting the Target? pp. 13-20.
44. Clock, "The Comparative Study of Communications and Opinion For-
mation," pp. 512-23. Bigman, in the BSSR proposal on national commu-
nication systems detailed in the next note, attributes this article jointly to
Lazarsfeld and Glock, although only dock's byline appears in POQ. La-
zarsfeld had a second article on a closely related topic in the same issue of the
journal.
45. Account list cards, BSSR Archives, series I, box 13; BSSR (Stanley
Bigman), "An Outline for the Study of National Communication Systems."
46. Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence (Glencoe, IL: Free
Press, 1955).
47. BSSR, Are We Hitting the Target?
48. Daniel Lerner with Lucille Pevsner, The Passing of Traditional Society
(Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1958), p. 79; Bruce Lannes Smith, "Trends in Re-
search in International Communication and Opinion, 1945-1955," 20, no. 1
(Spring 1956): 182-95.
49. BSSR (Stanley Bigman), "An Outline for the Study of National Com-
munication Systems"; "Questionnaire for Opinion Leaders — Form B," BSSR
Archives, series II, box 3, University of Maryland Libraries Special Collections,
College Park.
50. Bernard Berelson, Paul Lazarsfeld, and William McPhee, Voting (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1954).
158
NOTES
51. Katz and Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence.
52. Joseph Burkholder Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (New York: Bal-
lantine, 1976), p. 84. Smith was a CIA officer in the agency's Far Eastern
division during the early 1950s, with responsibilities for political and psycho-
logical warfare in the Philippines. On counterinsurgency in the Philippines, see
also Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft (New York: Pantheon,
1992), pp. 85-120 passim; D. Michael Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure
of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988);
Walden Bello, "Counterinsurgency's Proving Ground: Low Intensity Warfare
in the Philippines," in Michael Klare and Peter Kornbluh (eds.), Low Intensity
Warfare (New York: Pantheon, 1988) 158-82.
53. William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History (London: Zed, 1986), pp.
40-43.
54. Smith, Portrait, pp. 74-104, concerning Paul Linebarger and the Phil-
ippines campaign.
55. Blum, The CIA, pp. 40-43.
56. Sorenson, The Word War, p. 65.
57. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, The U.S. Ideological Effort: Gov-
ernment Agencies and Programs 88th Comp., 1st Sess. (Washington, DC: GPO,
1964), pp. 62-63.
58. On country plans, see ibid., pp. 62-63; on coordination with NSC and
CIA, see NSC 10/2: Office of Special Projects, June 15, 1948, and NSC 54121
2: Covert Operations, March 12, 1955, both in U.S. National Security Council
Policy Papers File, RG 273, U.S. National Archives, Washington, DC; Sor-
enson, The Word War, p. 28; John Prados, Presidents' Secret Wars (New York:
Morrow, 1986), pp. 84-87, 109.
59. Sorenson, The Word War, p. 46.
60. Shearon Lowery and Melvin De Fleur, Milestones in Mass Communi-
cation Research (New York: Longman, 1983), pp. 205-31.
61. Stuart Dodd, "Testing Message Diffusion from Person to Person," 16,
no. 2 (Summer 1952): 247-62. Dodd does not acknowledge his sponsors here.
Instead, he notes hypothetically, "Suppose that our Air Force wishes to drop
leaflets on an enemy or a neutral population, whether civilian or military, or
on our own population" (see p. 247).
62. Stuart Dodd, "Formulas for Spreading Opinions," 22, no. 4 (Winter
1958): 537, where Dodd notes that U.S. Air Force contract AF 13(038)-27522
underwrote the research. See also Lowery and De Fleur, Milestones, pp. 207-
8.
63. Lowery and De Fleur, Milestones, p. 208.
64. Ibid.
65. On the U.S. Air Force interest, ibid., pp. 207-8; on the CIA interest,
see Sig Mickelson, America's Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe
Notes
159
and Radio Liberty (New York: Praeger, 1983), p. 56; on air-dropped leaflets'
role in strategic war plans: author's interview with Fletcher Prouty, April 12,
1984.
66. Lowery and De Fleur, Milestones, pp. 205-31, with summary of im-
portant contributions at pp. 229-31; see also Dodd, "Formulas for Spreading
Opinions," pp. 537-54.
67. Dodd, "Formulas for Spreading Opinions," pp. 551-54.
68. On the "bomber gap" affair, see John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S.
Intelligence Analysis and Russian Military Strength (New York: Dial, 1982),
pp. 38-50.
69. Mikelson, America's Other Voice, p. 56.
70. Information on Cantril in this paragraph is from "Cantril, [Albert]
Hadley," National Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. 55, pp. 211-12.
71. See, for example, William Buchanan and Hadley Cantril, How Nations
See Each Other (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972), pp. 91-101; or Hadley
Cantril, The Politics of Despair (New York: Basic Books, 1958).
72. "Cantril, [Albert] Hadley. See also collection of Psychological Strategy
Board correspondence with Cantril, including Cantril's oblique reference to
what appears to be clandestine CIA sponsorship and editing of his pamphlet
The Goals of the Individual and the Hopes of Humanity (1951; published by
Institute for Associated Research, Hanover, NH) in Cantril note of October 22,
1951; in Hadley Cantril correspondence, Psychological Strategy Board, Truman
Library, Independence, MO.
73. John M. Crewdson and Joseph Treaster, "Worldwide Propaganda Net-
work Built by the CIA" New York Times, December 26, 1977.
74. Hadley Cantril, The Human Dimension: Experiences in Policy Research
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967), pp. 131-32, 145.
75. Crewdson and Treaster, "Worldwide Propaganda Network."
76. Hadley Cantril and David Rodnick, Understanding the French Left
(Princeton: Institute for International Social Research, 1956).
77. Cantril, The Human Dimension, pp. 134 — 43.
78. Cantril, The Politics of Despair; Cantril, The Human Dimension, pp. 1-
5, 144.
79. Lloyd Free and Hadley Cantril, The Political Beliefs of Americans (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967). On the question of legality,
note that the CIA's charter bars the agency from "police, subpoena, law-
enforcement powers or internal security functions," a phrase that most observers
contend prohibits the CIA from collecting intelligence on U.S. citizens inside
the United States. On this point, see Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the
Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York: Pocket Books, 1979), pp.
315-17, 367-70, concerning the CIA's Operation Chaos.
80. For an example of a similar, later technique, see "Redefining the Amer-
160
NOTES
ican Electorate," Washington Post, October 1, 1987, p. A12, with data provided
by the Times Mirror-Gallup Organization.
81. On CIA funding of CENIS, see Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The
CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Dell, 1974), p. 181; and David
Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Vintage, 1974),
p. 244. On CIA funding of studies, see Marchetti and Marks, The CIA, p. 181.
For an example of a major study reported to have been underwritten by the
CIA, see W. W. Rostow and Alfred Levin, The Dynamics of Soviet Society
(New York: Norton, 1952). On CENIS as a conduit of CIA funds, see Wise
and Ross, The Invisible Government, p. 244. On Millikan's role, see U.S.
Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, "Problems of Development and
Internal Defense" (Country Team Seminar, June II, 1962).
82. Ithiel de Sola Pool, "The Necessity for Social Scientists Doing Research
for Governments," Background 10, no. 2 (August 1966): 114-15.
83. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies,
A Plan for Research in International Communications World Politics, 6, no.
3 (April 1954): 358-77; MIT, CENIS, The Center for International Studies: A
Description (Cambridge: MIT, July 1955).
84. Don Price Oral History, pp. 61-70, and Don Price memo, May 21, 1954
(appendix to oral history), Ford Foundation Archives, New York. The archival
evidence concerning this aspect of the Ford Foundation's relationship with the
CIA was first brought to light by Kai Bird.
85. On Shils, see Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy (New York: Free
Press, 1989), pp. 98-209 passim. On Speier, see, Hans Speier, "Psychological
Warfare Reconsidered," RAND paper no. 196, February 5, 1951; Hans Speier,
"International Political Communication: Elite and Mass," World Politics (April
1952 [RAND paper no. P-270], Hans Speier and W. Phillips Davison, "Psy-
chological Aspects of Foreign Policy," RAND paper no. P-615, December 15,
1954. Speier's other contemporary work that has since come to light includes
several studies of Soviet response to West German rearmament, Soviet political
tactics involving nuclear threats, a report on the American Soldier series, and
a commentary on political applications of game theory. Speier died February
17, 1990, in Sarasota, Florida; see "Hans Speier, Sociologist," Washington
Post, March 2, 1990. On Carroll, see Wallace Carroll, The Army's Role in
Current Psychological Warfare (top secret, declassified following author's man-
datory review request), February 24, 1949, box 10, tab 61, entry 154, RG 319,
U.S. National Archives, Washington, DC; Wallace Carroll, "It Takes a Russian
to Beat a Russian," Life, December 19, 1949, pp. 80-86; "CIA Trained
Tibetans in Colorado, New Book Says," New York Times, April 19, 1973.
86. Ithiel de Sola Pool and Frank Bonilla (eds.), "A Special Issue on Studies
in Political Communication," 20, no. 1 (Spring 1956); Daniel Lerner (ed.),
"Special Issue: Attitude Research in Modernizing Areas," 22, no. 3 (Fall 1958).
Notes
161
87. In 20, no. 1 (Spring 1956): Harold Isaacs, "Scratches on Our Minds,"
p. 197; Y. B. Damle, "Communication of Modem Ideas and Knowledge in
[East] Indian Villages," p. 257; Claire Zimmerman and Raymond Bauer, "The
Effect of an Audience upon What Is Remembered," p. 238; Suzanne Keller,
"Diplomacy and Communication," p. 176; and Harold Isaacs, "World Affairs
and U.S. Race Relations: A Note on Little Rock," 22, no. 3 (Fall 1958): 364.
88. Ithielde Sola Pool, Suzanne Keller, and Raymond Bauer, "The Influence
of Foreign Travel on Political Attitudes of U.S. Businessmen," p. 161; Frank
Bonilla, "When Is Petition 'Pressure'?" p. 39; Daniel Lerner, "French Business
Leaders Look at EDC," p. 212— all in 20, no. 1 (Spring 1956); and Daniel
Lerner, "Editors Introduction," p. 217; Ithiel de Sola Pool and Kali Prasad,
"Indian Student Images of Foreign People," p. 292; Frank Bonilla, "Elites
and Public Opinion in Areas of High Social Stratification," p. 349; all in 22,
no. 3 (Fall 1958).
89. Ivor Wayne, "American and Soviet Themes and Values: A Content
Analysis of Themes in Popular Picture Magazines," p. 314; Patricia Kendall,
"The Ambivalent Character of Nationalism among Egyptian Professionals,"
p. 277— all in 20, no. 1 (Spring 1956).
90. Guy Pauker, "Indonesian Images of Their National Self," p. 305; Lucian
Pye, "Administrators, Agitators and Brokers," p. 342; Alain Girard, "The
First Opinion Research in Uruguay and Chile," p. 251; Kurt Back, "The
Change-Prone Person in Puerto Rico," p. 330; Robert Carlson, "To Talk with
Kings," p. 224; Herbert Hyman et al., "The Values of Turkish College Youth,"
p. 275; Raymond Gastil, "Middle Class Impediments to Iranian Moderniza-
tion," p. 325;Gorden Hirabayashi and M. Fathalla El Khatib, "Communication
and Political Awareness in the Villages of Egypt," p. 357; A. J. Meyer,
"Entrepreneurship and Economic Development in the Middle East," p. 391;
Richard Robinson, "Turkey's Agrarian Revolution and the Problem of Urban-
ization," p. 397; Lincoln Armstrong and Rashid Bashshur, "Ecological Patterns
and Value Orientations in Lebanon," p. 406-— all in 22, no. 3 (Fall 1958).
91. Isaacs, "World Affairs and U.S. Race Relations," p. 364.
92. Lerner, "Editor's Introduction," pp. 218, 219, 221.
93. Lerner and Pevsner, The Passing of Traditional Society, p. 396. Emphasis
added.
94. Special Operations Research Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War Mis-
sion, pp. 59-63, 69-77; Blum, The CIA, pp. 133-62.
95. On communications theorists' contributions to counterinsurgency, see
Special Operations Research Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War Mission,
pp. 159-69 (Pye) and 199ff (Pool). See also Ithiel de Sola Pool (ed.), Social
Science Research and National Security (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Insti-
tution [Office of Naval Research Project], 1963), pp. 1-25 (Pool), 46-74
(Schramm), 148-66 (Pye).
162
NOTES
96. Special Operations Research Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War Mis-
sion, pp. 282ff; see also U.S. Department of the Army, Art and Science of
Psychological Operations, pp. xvii, 47 — 53.
97. The Camelot Affair precipitated the first genuinely public discussion of
the collision between the professed humanitarian values of modern social science
and the actual ends to which it had been put in the world political arena. In
1964, the U.S. Army hired private U.S. social scientists to conduct a series of
long-term inquiries into the social structures, political and economic resources,
ethnic rivalries, communication infrastructures, and similar basic data con-
cerning developing countries considered likely to see strong revolutionary move-
ments during the 1960s. The project exploded when nationalist and left-wing
forces in Chile and other targeted countries protested, labeling Camelot a de
facto espionage operation. Camelot contractors, notably sociologist Jesse Ber-
nard of American University, replied that the criticism was "laughable" because
Camelot's had been "designed as a scientific research project" in which the
countries selected for study made "no difference." The argument escalated
from there. See House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Behavioral Sciences and
the National Security, Report No. 4, 89th Cong. 1st sess. (Washington, DC:
GPO, 1965); Jesse Bernard, "Conflict as Research and Research as Conflict,"
in Irving Louis Horowitz, The Rise and Fall of Project Camelot, rev. ed.
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974), p. 129n.
98. Special Operations Research Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War Mis-
sion, pp. 282ff; see also U.S. Department of the Army, Art and Science of
Psychological Operations, pp. xvii, 47-53.
99. For example, Executive Office of the President, "NSAM No. 308: A
Program to Promote Publicly U.S. Policies in Vietnam" (June 22, 1964);
McGeorge Bundy, "NSAM No. 328: Military Actions in Vietnam" (April 6,
1965); "NSAM No. 329: Establishment of a Task Force on Southeast Asian
Economic and Social Development" (April 9, 1965); and "NSAM No. 330:
Expanded Psychological Operations in Vietnam" (April 9, 1965); each was
obtained via the Freedom of Information Act from the U.S. Office of the
Comptroller General.
100. On Lerner, Riley, Davison, Cottrell, and Pool, see Special Operations
Research Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War Mission, pp. xvi, 151-59, 199-
202, 282-86. On Pool, Davison, and Schramm, see Pool, Social Science Re-
search and National Security, pp. 1-74. On Lasswell, see Harold Lasswell,
World Revolutionary Elites: Studies in Coercive Ideological Movements (Cam-
bridge: MIT Press, 1966).
101. Jesse Delia, "Communication Research: A History," in Charles Berger
and Steven Chaffee (eds.), Handbook of Communication Science (Newbury
Park, CA: Sage, 1987), p. 59.
102. BSSR, Chitra Smith, International Propaganda and Psychological War-
Notes
163
fare: An Annotated Bibliography, BSSR Archives, series II, box 7, project 819,
University of Maryland Libraries Special Collections, College Park.
103. Bruce Lannes Smith and Chitra Smith, International Communication
and Political Opinion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956).
104. Clyde Kluckhohn, Alex Inkeles, and Raymond Bauer, Strategic Psy-
chological and Sociological Strengths and Vulnerabilities of the Soviet System
(Cambridge, MA: Russian Research Center, Harvard University, 1954).
105. Raymond Bauer, Alex Inkeles, and Clyde Kluckhohn, How the Soviet
System Works (1956; rpt. New York: Vintage, 1961).
106. Reported in Delia, "Communication Research," p. 59.
107. Leo Bogart, "Operating Assumptions of the U.S. Information Agency,"
19, no. 4 (Winter 1955-56): 374.
108. L. John Martin, International Propaganda: Its Legal and Diplomatic
Control (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958), pp. 205-6. See
also: B.S. Murty, The International Law of Propaganda (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989).
109. American Association for Public Opinion Research conference pro-
ceedings, "Propaganda Analysis," 18, no. 4 (Winter 1954-55): 445-46.
110. Ibid.
111. Ibid.
112. W. Phillips Davison, "A Review of Sven Rydenfelt's Communism in
Sweden," 18, no. 4 (Winter 1954-55): 375-88, with quote drawn from p. 377.
113. American Association for Public Opinion Research conference pro-
ceedings, "Propaganda and People in the Cold War," 20, no. 4 (Winter 1956-
57): 757-60, with quote drawn from p. 757.
114. Ibid., p. 758.
115. William Albig, "Two Decades of Opinion Study: 1936-1956," 21, no.
1 (Spring 1957): 14-22.
116. Bernard Berelson, "The State of Communication Research," 23, no.
1 (Spring 1959): 1-6, with quote drawn from p. 6. Berelson's comments do
not specify which "great ideas" he had in mind. The context of his comments
suggests, however, that he was referring to use of interdisciplinary communi-
cation studies as a window on social behavior generally, Lippmann's concept
of stereotype, the quantitative and methodological innovations associated with
Lasswell's "who says what to whom" formulation, and similar basic concepts.
Berelson's comments were delivered at the 1958 AAPOR conference. Wilbur
Shramm, David Riesman, and Raymond Bauer, in comments on the Berelson
analysis in the Spring 1959 issue, vigorously dissented; see pp. 6-17.
117. John Riley and Leonard Cottrell, "Research for Psychological War-
fare," 21, no. 1 (Spring 1957): 147-58.
118. Irene Gendzier, Managing Political Change: Social Scientists and the
Third World (Boulder, CO Westview Press, 1985); see also Special Operations
164
NOTES
Research Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War Mission; Rohan Samarajiva
and Peter Shields, "Integration, Telecommunication and Development: Power
in the Paradigms," Journal of Communication 40, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 84-
105; Rohan Samarajiwa, "The Murky Beginnings of the Communication and
Development Field," in N. Jayaweera and S. Amunugama (eds.), Rethinking
Development Communication (Singapore: Asian Mass Communication Research
and Information Centre, 1987).
119. "Images, Definitions and Audience Reactions in International Com-
munications," 20, no. 1 (Spring 1956): 197.
120. Ithiel de Sola Pool, "Communication in the Global Conflict," 20, no.
1 (Spring 1956): 313.
121. These sentiments are implicit in the articles in the Spring 1956 special
issue, but they are perhaps most concisely stated in the editor's introductions
to each section of the issue; see pp. 2, 5, 49, 103, 143, 197, 249, 299.
122. W. Phillips Davison, "On the Effects of Communication," 23, no. 3
(Fall 1959): 343-60; and author's interview with W. Phillips Davison, Novem-
ber 14, 1990.
123. Davidson, "On the Effects of Communication," pp. 344-55, with
quotes drawn from pp. 347, 349.
124. Ibid., p. 360.
125. Ibid., pp. 353-54.
126. Ibid., pp. 355, 348. Lloyd Free, Six Allies and a Neutral (Glencoe:
Free Press, 1959), pp. 350, 357, 360.
Chapter 7
1. Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United States (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1987), pp. 305, 308. On reformist orientation of much
social research prior to 1940, see also Albert Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford,
Political Economics of Social Research: The Case of Sociology (Springfield,
VA: Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technological Information, 1968),
p. 18.
2. Biderman and Crawford, Political Economics of Social Research, p. 30.
3. Ibid., p. 31.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 32.
6. Converse, Survey Research in the United States, pp. 212, 484 notes 92-
94. See Alexander Leighton, Human Relations in a Changing World (New
York: Dutton, 1949), pp. 58-95, for an extended discussion of the measurement
of the impact of conventional and atomic bombing on civilian morale in Japan.
7. See Edward Suchman, Samuel Stouffer, Leland DeVinney, and Irving
Janis, "Attitudes Toward Leadership and Social Control," in Samuel Stouffer
Notes
165
ct al., The American Soldier, Vol. 1, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1949), pp. 362-429. On propaganda effects, see Carl Hovland, Arthur Lums-
daine, and Fred Sheffield, Experiments on Mass Communication (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1949). The same theme was later explored in con-
siderable depth in studies by Irving Janis such as "Effects of Fear-Arousing
Propaganda" (with Seymour Feshbach), Journal of Abnormal Social Psychol-
ogy 48, no. 1 (1953): 78-92.
8. Biderman and Crawford, Political Economics of Social Research. See
endpapers of study for contract data.
9. Ibid., pp. 46-47.
10. Morris Janowitz, Sociology and the Military Establishment (New York:
Russell Sage Foundation, 1965), p. 121; cited in Biderman and Crawford,
Political Economics of Social Research, cited in p. 46.
11. Quoted in Biderman and Crawford, Political Economics of Social Re-
search, pp. 45 — 46.
12. Samuel Stouffer, " 1665 and 1954" (AAPOR Presidential Address), POQ
18, no. 3 (Fall 1954): 233. Unless otherwise noted, all unattributed articles in
this chapter appeared in POQ.
13. See, for example, Hadley Cantril, "Psychology Working for Peace,"
American Psychologist 4, no. 3 (March 1949): 69-73.
14. L. John Martin interview with the author, December 6, 1989.
15. Stouffer, "1665 and 1954."
16. Samuel Stouffer Edgar Borgatta, David Hays, and Andrew Henry, "A
Technique for Improving Cumulative Scales," 16, no. 2 (Summer 1952): 273-
91; Andrew Henry, "A Method for Classifying Non-Scale Response Patterns
in a Guttman Scale," 16, no. 1 (Spring 1952): 94-106; Edgar Borgatta and
David Hays, "The Limitations on the Arbitrary Classification of Non-Scale
Response Patterns in a Guttman Scale," 16, no. 3 (Fall 1952): 410-16; Edgar
Borgatta, "An Error Ratio for Scalogram Analysis," POQ 19, no. 1 (Spring
1955): 96-99. Each of these papers was underwritten by U.S. Air Force contract
no. AP 33 (038)-12782 from the Human Resources Research Institute, Maxwell
Air Force Base, Alabama; they constitute the basis of Stouffer's well-known
"H-Technique."
17. Clyde Kluckhohn, Alex Inkeles, and Raymond Bauer, Strategic Psy-
chological and Sociological Strengths and Vulnerabilities of the Soviet System
(Cambridge, MA: Russian Research Center, Harvard University, 1954).
18. Stouffer et al., "A Technique for Improving Cumulative Scales."
19. Eric Marder, "Linear Segments: A Technique for Scalogram Analysis,"
16, no. 3 (Fall 1952): 417-31.
20. Daniel Lerner, "International Coalitions and Communications Content:
The Case of Neutralism," 16, no. 4 (Winter 1952); 681-88, with quotes drawn
from pp. 682, 683, 685.
166
NOTES
21. Christopher Lasch, "The Cultural Cold War: A Short History of the
Congress for Cultural Freedom," in Barton Bernstein (ed.), Towards a New
Past (New York: Pantheon, 1968), pp. 322-59; and Peter Coleman, The Liberal
Conspiracy (New York: Free Press, 1989).
22. David Rodnick and Elizabeth Rodnick,' 'Notes on Communist Personality
Types in Czechoslovakia," 14, no. 1 (Spring 1950): 81-88; Jean-Marie Do-
menach, "Leninist Propaganda," 15, no. 2 (Summer 1951): 265-73; Herbert
Krugman, ' 'The Appeal of Communism to American Middle Class Intellectuals
and Trade Unionists," 16, no. 3 (Fall 1952): 331-55; Morris Janowitz and
Dwaine Marvick, "Authoritarianism and Political Behavior," 17, no. 2 (Sum-
mer 1953): 185-201.
23. Gabriel Almond, with Herbert Krugman, Elsbeth Lewin, and Howard
Wriggins, The Appeals of Communism (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1954). See also Gabriel Almond correspondence file, Psychological Strategy
Board, Truman Library, Independence, MO, in which Almond requests the
Psychological Strategy Board to "monitor this study . . . and appraise the use-
fulness of the work we are doing here at Princeton from the point of view of
the Psychological Strategy Board" (memo of April 16, 1952).
24. Almond, The Appeals of Communism, pp. 15, 18, 142.
25. On Voice of America hearings, see David M. Oshinsky, A Conspiracy
So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (New York: Free Press, 1983), pp.
266-77 passim; and Robert William Pirsein, The Voice of America (New York:
Arno, 1979), pp. 235ff.
26. House Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations, Tax
Exempt Foundations 83rd Cong. 2nd sess., (Washington, DC: GPO, 1954).
For an overview of the committee's investigative thesis, see committee research
director Norman Dodd's testimony (pp. 5-23) and that of his assistant Kathryn
Casey (pp. 64-89). For Stouffer's defense, see Charles Dollard's (Carnegie
Corporation) testimony (pp. 972-74). For Berelson's defense, see H. Rowan
Gaither's (Ford Foundation) testimony (pp. 1035-36).
27. Ibid. Pendleton Herring testimony (pp. 794-865 passim, with quotes
drawn from p. 838).
28. Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); David Caute, The Great Fear:
The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1978); Jane Sanders, Cold War on the Campus: Academic Freedom
at the University of Washington 1946-1964 (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1979). Of related interest, see Philip Meranto, Oneida Meranto, and
Matthew Lippman, Guarding the Ivory Tower: Repression and Rebellion in
Higher Education (Denver: Lucha, 1985); Jonathan Feldman, Universities in
the Business of Repression (Boston: South End Press, 1989); John Trumpbour
(ed.), How Harvard Rules: Reason in the Service of Empire (Boston: South
Notes
167
End Press, 1989); Athena Theodore, The Campus Troublemakers: Academic
Women in Protest (Houston: Cap and Gown Press, 1986).
29. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, p. 42.
30. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Daniel Lerner" FBI file no. 123-
10557, correspondence from A. H. Belmont to V. P. Kay, August 3, 1953.
31. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the
American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988). For a more concise presentation, see Peter Novick, "Historians, 'Ob-
jectivity' and the defense of the West," Radical History, No. 40 (January
1988): 7ff; and Jesse Lemisch, On Active Service in War and Peace: Politics
and Ideology in the American Historical Profession (Toronto: Hogtown, 1975).
32. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower; Caute, The Great Fear, pp. 403-45.
33. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, pp. 114-15. See Laws of Maryland (1949),
Chapter 86, pp. 96ff, for legislative history.
34. Caute, The Great Fear, pp. 174-75.
35. House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Related to H.B.
4700, to Amend Section 11 of the Subversive Activities Control Act (The Fund
for Social Analysis), 87th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1961).
36. Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, "Petition to the Congress of the
United States 1 ' (advertisement) Washington Post, May 31, 1961, p. A16. Note
signatories on advertisement fail to include prominent U.S. social scientists.
37. Paul Lazarsfeld and Wagner Thielens, The Academic Mind (Glencoe,
IL: Free Press, 1958), pp. 193, 194, 197-204, 218-22, 206, 382.
38. Lerner, "International Coalitions," p. 681.
39. William Glaser, "The Semantics of the Cold War," 20, no. 4 (Winter
1956): 691-716.
40. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower, pp. 219-338.
41. See, for example, testimony of A. H. Hobbs in House Committee to
Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations, Tax Exempt Foundations, pp. 1 14-88.
42. As in Stuart Dodd, "Testing Message Diffusion from Person to Person,"
16, no. 2 (Summer 1952): 247-62; or in the Bureau of Applied Social Research's
practice of citing itself as a sponsor for research rather than the original source
of the contract, e.g., Patricia Kendall, "The Ambivalent Character of Nation-
alism among Egyptian Professionals," 20, no. 1 (Spring 1956): 277.
43. Almond, Appeals of Communism. For an interesting recent critique of
the research methodology originally used in Schramm's studies of broadcasting
into eastern Europe, but more recently applied to U.S. propaganda broadcasting
to Cuba, see U.S. General Accounting Office, Broadcasts to Cuba: TV Marti
Surveys Are Flawed (GAO/NSIAD-90-252, August 1990).
44. Elliot Mishler, review, Character and Social Structure, by Hans Gerth
and C. Wright Mills, 18, no. 3 (Fall 1954): 323; W. Philips Davison, review,
Sociologica: Aufsaetze, Max Horkheimer zum Sechzigsten Geburtstag Gewid-
168
NOTES
met, introduction by Horkheimer, 20, no. 2 (Summer 1956): 480; Arnold Ro-
gow, review, The Power Elite, by C. Wright Mills, 20, no. 3 (Fall 1956): 613-
15.
45. Avery Leiserson, review, The People Don't Know, by George Seldes,
14, no. 1 (Spring 1950): 156-57; Lloyd Barenblatt, review, The Hidden Per-
suaders, by Vance Packard, 22, no. 4 (Winter 1958): 579.
Chapter 8
1. Steven Chaffee (ed.), "The Contributions of Wilbur Schramm to Mass
Communication Research," Journalism Monographs, No. 36 (October 1974):
1-8.
2. James Tankard, "Wilbur Schramm: Definer of a Field," Journalism Ed-
ucator 43, no. 3 (Autumn 1988): 11. Schramm's impact as a definer of ideo-
logically "responsible" analysis extended beyond communication research.
See, for example, his role on the editorial board of the Center for Research in
International Studies at Stanford University, a post he shared with Gabriel
Almond.
3. See, for example, John Riley and Wilbur Schramm, The Reds Take a
City: The Communist Occupation of Seoul (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, 1951); or Wilbur Schramm, "The Soviet Concept of 'Psycho-
logical' Warfare," in Hideya Kumata and Wilbur Schramm (eds.), Four
Working Papers on Propaganda Theory (Urbana: Illinois Institute of Com-
munications Research, 1955).
4. Chaffee, "The Contributions of Wilbur Schramm," pp. 4, 5.
5. Wilbur Schramm (ed.), The Process and Effects of Mass Communication
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1954), see Foreword for acknowledgment
of USIA role. The influence of mis text has been such that McLeod and Blumler,
among others, date the emergence of communication research "as an autono-
mous academic discipline" from the publication of the 1954 Schramm text; see
Jack McLeod and Jay G. Blumler, "The Macrosocial Level of Communication
Science," in Charles Berger and Steven Chaffee (eds.), Handbook of Com-
munication Science (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987), p. 284.
6. Schramm on rival communications systems, see Schramm, "The Soviet
Concept of Psychological Warfare," and Wilbur Schramm, "Soviet Communist
Theory," in Fred Siebert, Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Schramm, Four
Theories of the Press (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), pp. 105-46.
On Schramm's sources, Schramm's footnotes acknowledge his principal sources
for his description of the Soviet communications systems are works by Frederick
Barghoorn, Raymond Bauer, Merle Fainsod, Alex Inkeles, Paul Kecskemeti,
Nathan Leites, and Philip Selznick, each of which was prepared in the Russian
Research Project at Harvard; W. W. Rostow and Alfred Levin's Dynamics of
Notes
169
Soviet Society (New York: Norton, 1952), whose production and publication
was sponsored by the CIA; a study by Sidney Hook prepared for the U.S. Air
Force; and his own work for the USIA and the U.S. Air Force on propaganda
in Korea. For a complete list, see Siebert, Peterson, and Schramm, Four The-
ories, pp. 152-53.
7. On Kirkpatrick, see Christopher Hitchens, "How Neoconservatives Perish:
Good-bye to 'Totalitarianism' and All That," Harpers 281, No. 1682 (July
1990): 65. On Schramm's role in the origin and popularization of the "au-
thoritarian" versus "totalitarian" concept, see Schramm, "Soviet Communist
Theory." For an example of the persistence and gradual modification of this
conceptual structure in today's communication theory, see Denis McQuail, Mass
Communication Theory: An Introduction (London and Beverly Hills: Sage,
1987), pp. 111-19.
8. Riley and Schramm, Reds; John Riley, Wilbur Schramm, and Frederick
Williams, "Flight from Communism: A Report on Korean Refugees," POQ
15, no. 2 (Summer 1951): 274 (unless otherwise noted, all unattributed articles
in this chapter appeared in POQ); See also Wilbur Schramm and John Riley,
"Communication in the Sovietized State, as Demonstrated in Korea," American
Sociological Review 16 (1951): 757-66. See also Wilbur Schramm, F.E.C.
Psychological Warfare Operations: Radio (Washington and Baltimore: Oper-
ations Research Office, Johns Hopkins University, 1952, ORO-T-20[FEC]).
9. Noted in Chaffee, "The Contributions of Wilbur Schramm," p. 34. Wilbur
Schramm (chair), U.S. Information Agency: A Program of Research and Eval-
uation for the International Information Administration (Washington, DC:
USIA, 1953).
10. Robert Holt, Radio Free Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1958), p. 236; Joseph Whelan, Radio Liberty: A Study of Its Origins,
Structure, Policy, Programming and Effectiveness (Washington, DC: Congres-
sional Research Service, 1972), pp. 299-301; see also Chaffee, "The Contri-
butions of Wilbur Schramm," p. 31.
11. "Schramm, Wilbur Lang," Contemporary Authors, Vol. 105, p. 432;
Chaffee, "The Contributions of Wilbur Schramm," p. 31.
12. Chaffee, "The Contributions of Wilbur Schramm," p. 31.
13. Schramm, The Process and Effects of Mass Communication (see Fore-
word for acknowledgment of USIA sponsorship). Kumata and Schramm, Four
Working Papers (USIA contract 1A-W-362). Wilbur Schramm, The Science of
Human Communication (New York: Basic Books, 1963); Chaffee, "The Con-
tributions of Wilbur Schramm," p. 7.
14. Contemporary Authors, Vol. 105, p. 432.
15. Chaffee, "The Contributions of Wilbur Schramm," p. 17, 43-44.
16. Tankard, "Wilbur Schramm," p. 11.
17. W. Brian Arthur, "Positive Feedbacks in the Economy," Scientific Amer-
170
NOTES
icon 262 (February 1990): 92-99, with quotes drawn from p. 99. For related
and more detailed presentations, see W. Brian Arthur,' 'Self-Reinforcing Mech-
anisms in Economics," in Philip Anderson Kenneth Arrow and David Pines,
(eds.), The Economy as an Evolving Complex System (Reading, MA: Addison-
Wesley, 1988); Paul David, Path Dependence: Putting the Past into the Future
of Economics (IMSSS Technical Report No. 533, Stanford University, Novem-
ber 1988); Elhanan Helpman and Paul Krugman, Market Structure and Foreign
Trade (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985).
18. Todd Gitlin, "Media Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm," Theory and
Society 6, no. 2 (1978): 205-53.
19. Chaffee, "The Contributions of Wilbur Schramm," in Preface and
p. 1.
20. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1972).
21. John Clausen, "Research on the American Soldier as a Career Contin-
gency," Social Psychology Quarterly 47, no. 2 (1984): 207-13. Stuart Dodd,
"Formulas for Spreading Opinions," 22, no. 4 (Winter 1958): 537-54. Par-
ticipation in panels is repeatedly demonstrated in the American Association for
Public Opinion Research annual conferences throughout the 1950s, which reg-
ularly featured panels reporting on government-funded psychological warfare
projects. Summaries of these panels typically appear in the winter issue of each
year's Public Opinion Quarterly. On professional advancement, see, for ex-
ample, Clausen, "Research," p. 212.
22. See Samuel Stouffer et al., The American Soldier, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1949), pp. 3-54, for an extended discussion of the origins
and the financing of various stages of the project; p. viii for discussion of IBM
punch cards.
23. Ibid. See also frontispiece of text for Carnegie Corporation acknowl-
edgment. On Stouffer, Lumsdaine, and Hovland dependency on federal support,
see, for example, Samuel Stouffer et al., "A Technique for Improving Cu-
mulative Scales," 16, no. 2 (Summer 1952): 273-91; in which Stouffer ac-
knowledges U.S. Air Force contract no. AF33 (038)- 12782 as the principal
underwriter of the development of his well-known "H-technique"; Arthur
Lumsdaine and Irving Janis, "Resistance to 'Counterpropaganda' Produced by
One-Sided and Two-Sided 'Propaganda' Presentations," 17, no. 3 (Fall 1953):
310. Note that Lumsdaine became the "monitor" for the U.S. Air Force con-
tracts provided to Stouffer; and "Psychological News and Notes," American
Psychologist 3, no. 12 (December 1948): 559.
24. See, for example, Lumsdaine and Janis, "Resistance to 'Counterpro-
paganda' "; W. Phillips Davison, "On the Effects of Communication," 23,
no. 3 (Fall 1959): 343. Davison writes that Hovland's "laboratory experiments
have made it possible to formulate an impressive number of propositions about
Notes
171
the effects of communications. . .. Attempts to systematize or derive proposi-
tions from the relatively small segment of qualitative experience that has been
sifted [in this field] have been made largely in the literature of rhetoric, political
communication, and psychological warfare." For examples of USIA application
of Hovland's experimental data, see Ralph White, "The New Resistance to
International Propaganda," 16, no. 4 (Winter 1952-53): 541.
25. Bureau of Social Science Research, ' An Outline for the Study of National
Communication Systems" (November 1953), series II, box 4, project 642;
"Kazakhstan and the Kazakhs: Targets and Vulnerabilities in Psychological
Warfare" (December 1954), series II, box 5, project 649; "The Kazakhs: A
Background Study for Psychological Warfare" (November 1955), series II,
box 4, project 649; and "Mass Communications in Eastern Europe" (January
1958), series II, box 10-11, project 303; each is in the BSSR Archives, Uni-
versity of Maryland Libraries Special Collections, College Park.
26. Michael Gurevitch and Jay G. Blumler, "Linkages Between Mass Media
and Politics: A Model for Analysis of Political Communication Systems," in
James Curran, Michael Gurovitch, and Janet Weellacott (eds.), Mass Com-
munications and Society (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979).
27. On content analysis, see Harold Lasswell and Nathan Leites, The Lan-
guage of Politics (New York: George Stewart, 1949), for a series of examples
of wartime work by Lasswell, Leites, Janis, de Sola Pool, and others. On
support of survey organizations and development of techniques, see Jean Con-
verse, Survey Research in the United States (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1987), pp. 275-76, 340-41, 353, 357, 506-7 notes 37 and 42, 531 note
17; Carl Hovland, Arthur Lumsdaine, and Fred Sheffield, Experiments in Mass
Communication (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949). On support for
Likert and the Institute for Social Research, see Converse, Survey Research in
the United States, pp. 340-41, 353, 537, 531 note 17; and Stouffer et al., The
American Soldier, Vol. I, p. 26. On support for Stouffer, see Stouffer et al.,
"A Technique for Improving Cumulative Scales." On financing the use of
computers, see Stouffer et al., The American Soldier. Vol. I, p. 28.
28. On support for de Sola Pool, see Sig Mickelson, America's Other Voice:
The Story of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (New York: Praeger, 1983),
p. 211. On support for Schramm, see Whelan, Radio Liberty, pp. 299-301.
29. Whelan, Radio Liberty; See also House Subcommittee on International
Organizations and Movements, Winning the Cold War: The U.S. Ideological
Offensive (Washington, DC: GPO, 1964), Part 6: "US Government Agencies
and Programs," and Part 7: "Research Studies of the US Information Agency."
30. Shearon Lowery and Melvin De Fleur, Milestones in Mass Communi-
cation Research (New York: Longman, 1983), pp. 204ff. U.S. Air Force
contract no. 13(038)-27522 underwrote Dodd's Project Revere research. On
financing, see pp. 207-8.
172
NOTES
31. Everett Rogers, "The Passing of the Dominant Paradigm of Develop-
ment," in Diffusion of Innovations, 3rd ed. (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1983),
p. 121.
32. Ithiel de Sola Pool, "The Mass Media and Politics in the Modernization
Process," in Lucien Pye (ed.), Communications and Political Development
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 234-53; Guy Pauker, "Indo-
nesian Images of Their National Self," 22, No. 3 (Fall 1958): 305-24. Everett
Hagen, On the Theory of Social Change (Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, 1962).
MIT, CENIS, The Center for International Studies: A Description (Cambridge:
MIT, July 1955), pp. 59-60.
33. On Pool's, Pauker's, and Hagen's roles in counterinsurgency, see U.S.
Department of State, Foreign Service Institute, Problems of Development and
Internal Defense, Report of a Country Team Seminar (on counterinsurgency),
June 11-July 13, 1962 (Washington, DC: Foreign Service Institute, 1962),
Ithiel de Sola Pool (ed.), Social Science Research and National Security (Wash-
ington, DC: Smithsonian Institution [Office of Naval Research Project], 1963).
For an elaboration of "development theory" as it applied to U.S. counterin-
surgency in Third World countries, see remarks by Daniel Lerner, Ithiel de
Sola Pool, Guy Pauker, Lucien Pye, Morris Janowitz, W. Phillips Davison,
Hans Speier, and others in Special Operations Research Office, The U.S. Army's
Limited- War Mission.
34. Chaffee, "The Contributions of Wilbur Schramm," p. 1.
35. On roots of "two-step" and "reference group" theories, see Elihu Katz
and Paul Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1955); Robert
Merton, "Patterns of Influence" (1949) in Robert Merton, Social Theory and
Social Structure (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957); Herbert Hyman and Paul
Sheatsley, "Some Reasons Why Information Campaigns Fail," 11, no. 3 (Fall
1947): 412-23.
36. Bruce Lannes Smith, "Trends in Research in International Communi-
cation and Opinion, 1945-1955," 20, no. 1 (Spring 1956): 182-96, with quotes
drawn from p. 191.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Stanley Bigman, Are We flitting the Target? A Manual of Evaluation
Research Methods for USIE (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State,
1951).
40. Leonard Pearlin and Morris Rosenberg, "Propaganda Techniques in
Institutional Advertising," 16, no. 1 (Spring 1952): 5.
41. Herbert Krugman, "An Historical Note on Motivation Research," 20,
no. 4 (Winter 1956): 719-23.
42. Hideya Kumata and Wilbur Schramm, "The Propaganda Theory of the
German Nazis," in Kumata and Schramm, Four Working Papers, p. 37. In
Notes
173
Schramm's original conception, this attribute of propaganda applied simply to
"totalitarian" societies. The Propaganda Theory project was prepared under
USIA contract 1A-W-362.
43. Albert Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford, The Political Economics of
Social Research: The Case of Sociology (Springfield, VA: Clearinghouse for
Federal Scientific and Technological Information, 1968), pp. 46-47.
44. For example, Joseph Klapper (chair) "Propaganda and People in the
Cold War" (AAPOR panel report), 20, no. 4 (Winter 1956): 757-60.
45. Clausen, "Research on the American Soldier."
46. Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei Socialis (Encyclical Letter), February
19, 1988; Roberto Suro, "Papal Encyclical Says Superpowers Hurt Third
World," Peter Steinfels, "An Unsparing View of Economic Ills," and "Ex-
cerpts from Papal Encyclical on Social Concerns of Church," each appearing
in New York Times, February 20, 1988.
Bibliographic Essay
1. Among Western observers, see, for example, Dean Acheson, Present at
the Creation (New York: New American Library, 1969), or James Forrestal,
The Forrestal Diaries, edited by Walter Millis (New York: Viking, 1951). For
an unusually candid "Soviet line" analysis of these issues, see Nikita Krush-
chev, Krushchev Remembers, edited and translated by Strobe Talbot (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1970), pp. 361-62, 367-63, 392-93, 453-60; and Nikita Krush-
chev, Krushchev Remembers: The Last Testament, edited and translated by
Strobe Talbot (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), pp. 47-67.
2. John Foster Dulles, War or Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1950); or
William Welch, American Images of Soviet Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1970); and Vojtech Mastny, Russia's Road to the Cold War
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).
3. Leaders of the People's Republic of China were particularly dramatic and
consistent advocates of the Manichaean vision from 1949 until the death of
Mao Zedong (Mao Tsetung) in 1976. See Mao Tsetung, Selected Works of Mao
Tsetung, Vol. 5 (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1977): or two pamphlets
from the Editorial Department of Renmin Ribao and Honggi, Apologists of Neo-
colonialism and Peaceful Coexistence — Two Diametrically Opposed Policies
(Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1963). Among Western observers, see, for
example, James Burnham, The Coming Defeat of Communism (New York: John
Day, 1950); James Burnham, Containment or Liberation? (New York: John
Day, 1953); or House Committee on Un-American Activities, The Communist
Conspiracy: Strategy and Tactics of World Communism 84th Cong. 2nd sess.
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1956).
4. Typical Western writings include Anthony Bouscaren, A Guide to Ami-
174
NOTES
Communist Action (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1958); American Security Coun-
cil, Guidelines for Cold War Victory (Chicago: American Security Council
Press, 1964); and Chamber of Commerce of the United States, Communist
Infiltration of the United States: Its Nature and How to Stop It (Washington,
DC: Chamber of Commerce of the United States, 1946). Soviet writings on
this theme include L. Skvortsov, The Ideology and Tactics of Anti-Communism,
translated by J. Turner (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969); and Nikolai Ya-
kovlev, CIA Target: The USSR, translated by V. Schneierson and D. Belyavsky
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984); D. Volkogonov, The Psychological War,
translated by Sergei Chulaki (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986). On Soviet
tactics, see also Paul Lendvai, The Bureaucracy of Truth: How Communist
Governments Manage the News (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981).
5. Perhaps the most sophisticated example of this trend has been Daniel
Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security
State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977). Earlier, widely cited "revisionist"
writings include William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Di-
plomacy (New York: Delta, 1961); Joyce Kolko and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits
of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 (New York;
Harper & Row, 1972); and David Horowitz (ed.), Corporations and the Cold
War (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969).
6. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1986); or John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the
History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). For a
sophisticated example of a "postrevisionist" interpretation of Soviet actions
from a Western perspective, see Joseph L. Nogee and Robert Donaldson, Soviet
Foreign Policy Since World War II (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981).
7. Bouscarin, Guide; American Security Council, Guidelines for Cold War
Victory.
8. See, for example, David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist
Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978);
Richard Freeland, The Truman Doctrine and the Origins of McCarthyism (New
York: Knopf, 1972); or Robert Griffith and Athan Theoharis (eds.), The Specter:
Original Essays on the Cold War and the Origins of McCarthyism (New York:
Franklin Watts, 1974).
9. For an overview, see Edward P. Lilly, "The Psychological Strategy Board
and Its Predecessors: Foreign Policy Coordination 1938-1953," in Gaetano
Vincitorio (ed.), Studies in Modern History (New York: St. Johns University
Press, 1968), pp. 337-82.
10. For example, portions of the 1940s U.S. Army records known as the
"Hot Files" (Record Group 319, entry 154, U.S. National Archives) have been
declassified only since 1989 in response to my Freedom of Information Act
request, and substantial numbers of these records remain classified. In 1989 the
Notes
175
Central Intelligence Agency intervened at the Truman Presidential Library to
reseal records of the Psychological Strategy Board that had been declassified
and open to the public for almost a decade.
11. John Marks, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and
Mind Control (New York: Times Books, 1979), pp. 204-5; Thomas Powers,
The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. (New York:
Pocket Books, 1979); Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Oper-
ations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots In-
volving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report, and Final Report 94th Cong. 2nd
Sess. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1975 and 1976, respectively).
12. Basic policy papers include U.S. National Security Council, NSC 4:
Coordination of Foreign Information Measures, December 9, 1947; NSC 4-A:
Psychological Operations, December 9, 1947; NSC 1012: Office of Special
Projects, June 18, 1948; NSC 43: Planning for Wartime Conduct of Overt
Psychological Warfare, March 9, 1949; NSC 59: The Foreign Information
Program and Psychological Warfare Planning, December 20, 1949; NSC 59/
1: The Foreign Information Program and Psychological Warfare Planning.
(Report to President Truman), March 9, 1950; NSC 5911: Progress Reports,
March 9, 1950, December 26, 1950, July 31, 1952, October 30, 1952, and
February 20, 1953; Index to National Psychological Warfare Plan for General
War, April 9, 1951; National Psychological Warfare Plan for General War,
May 8, 1951; NSC 74: A Plan for National Psychological Warfare, July 10,
1950; NSC 127: Plan for Conducting Psychological Operations During General
Hostilities, February 21, 1952; NSC 135, No 6: The National Psychological
Warfare Effort; NSC 5412/2: Covert Operations, December 28, 1955. The
extent to which the case files associated with these decisions have been de-
classified varies from case to case. Each of these is held by the U.S. National
Archives, Washington, DC.
13. An archival collection of Psychological Strategy Board records is avail-
able at the Truman Library, Independence, MO. See Dennis E. Bilger,' 'Records
of the Psychological Strategy Board, 1951-1953, Shelf List," Truman Library,
December 1981. For an overview of the board's activities, see Psychological
Strategy Board, "Progress Report on the National Psychological Effort for the
Period July 1, 1952, through September 30, 1952," President's Secretary's
Files, Truman Library; see also Department of State, Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Public Affairs, "Emergency Plan for Psychological Offensive
(USSR)," April 11, 1951, President's Secretary's Files, subject file b. 188,
Truman Library. In 1989 the Central Intelligence Agency intervened at the
Truman Library to reclassify selected Psychological Strategy Board records that
had been opened to the public for a decade or more.
14. See particularly Records of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, RG 218, CCS
385 (6-4-46), sections 7, 11, 16-17, 21-26, 31-47, 52-53, 71, 75-76, 79, 86;
176
NOTES
and Records of U.S. Army Staff Organizations, RG 319, entry 154 "Hot Files"
series, particularly P&O 091.412 TS, both of which are now available at the
National Archives in Washington, DC. A finding aid exists for psychological
warfare records in RG 331 (Records of Allied Operational and Occupation
Headquarters) covering much of the 1945-60 study period, but unfortunately
it remains classified at this writing.
15. Records of U.S. Army Staff Organizations, RG 319, entry 154 "Hot
Files" series, particularly P&O 091.412 TS, National Archives, Washington,
DC; Records of the Psychological Strategy Board, Truman Presidential Library,
Independence, MO.
16. National Security Archive, 1755 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington
DC 20036.
17. Center for National Security Studies, 122 Maryland Ave NE, Washington
DC 20002.
18. For an excellent, extended discussion of governmental use of secrecy
and disinformation in the United States, see David Wise, The Politics of Lying:
Government Deception, Secrecy and Power (New York: Vintage, 1973).
19. Lilly, "Foreign Policy Coordination"; Alfred Paddock, U.S. Army Spe-
cial Warfare: Its Origins (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press,
1982); William Daugherty and Morris Janowitz (eds.), A Psychological Warfare
Casebook (Baltimore; Johns Hopkins [for U.S. Army Operations Research
Office], 1958), pp. 12-47. Archival material includes Psychological Warfare
Study for Guidance in Strategic Planning; and State-Army-Navy-Air Force
Coordinating Committee (SANACC) case file no. 304, "Psychological Warfare:
Concepts and Organization" (May 1946-May 1949) available in declassified
form via Scholarly Resources microfilm series of State- War-Navy Coordinating
Committee (SWNCC) and State-Army-Navy-Air Force Coordinating Commit-
tee (SANACC) records (Wilmington DE: Scholarly Resources, 1978).
20. No comprehensive budget of U.S. psychological warfare activities is
known to exist. CIA psychological warfare consultant James Burnham, how-
ever, put the overall figure at over $1 billion annually during its heyday in the
early 1950s. See Burnham, Containment or Liberation?, p. 188; see also Comp-
troller General of the United States (General Accounting Office), U.S. Gov-
ernment Monies Provided to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1972) and Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA
and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Dell, 1974), pp. 74-78, 174. On
personnel, see Daniel Lerner, Sykewar: Psychological Warfare Against Ger-
many, D-Day to VE-Day (New York: George Stewart, 1948), which includes
an extensive (though not complete) list of U.S. and British personnel during
World War II (pp. 438-49); Larry D. Collins, "The Free Europe Committee:
American Weapon of the Cold War," Ph.D. diss., Carlton University, 1975;
James R. Price, Radio Free Europe: A Survey and Analysis (Washington, DC:
Notes
111
Congressional Research Service Document No. JX 1710 U.S. B, March 1972);
Joseph Whelan, Radio Liberty: A Study of Its Origins, Structure, Policy, Pro-
gramming and Effectiveness (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Ser-
vice, 1972).
21. John Crewdson and Joseph Treaster, "The CIA's 3-Decade Effort to
Mold the World's Views, New York Times, December 25, 26, and 27, 1977;
House Subcommittee on Oversight of the Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, Hearings: The CIA and the Media, 95th Cong., 1st and 2nd sess.
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1978); Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy (New
York: Free Press, 1989), pp. 59-102. For Eastern European reportage, see
Vitaly Petrusenko, A Dangerous Game: The CIA and the Mass Media (Prague:
Interpress Prague, n.d. [1978?]).
22. Daniel Schorr, "Are CIA Assets a Press Liability?" [More] 8, no. 2
(February 1978). For useful overviews, see Arlene Sanderson, "The CIA-
Media Connection," Freedom of Information Center Report No. 432, University
of Missouri School of Journalism, 1981: Loch Johnson, America's Secret
Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society (New York: Oxford University Press,
1989), pp. 183-203.
23. Robin W. Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-
1961 (New York: Morrow, 1987); Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy, pp. 1-
12 (summary), 253-76 (tabular presentation of major activities); David Wise
and Thomas Ross, The Espionage Establishment (New York: Bantam, 1968).
24. Marchetti and Marks, The CIA, p. 174; Sig Mikelson, America's Other
Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (New York: Praeger,
1983).
25. "Company-Made Balloons Aid 'Winds of Freedom' Effort," The Modern
Millwheet (General Mills employee publication), September 1951.
26. John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pp. 260-69.
27. James Miller, The United States and Italy 1940-1950: The Politics and
Diplomacy of Stabilization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1986); William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History (London: Zed, 1986), pp.
23-31, 130-33, 166-70; Arnold Cortesi and "Observer," "Two Vital Case
Histories," in Lester Markel (ed.), Public Opinion and Foreign Policy (New
York: Harper & Brothers for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1949); Robert
Holt and Robert van de Velde, Strategic Psychological Operations and Amer-
ican Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 159-
205. During 1975 the House Select Committee on Intelligence prepared a highly
critical report on the CIA's clandestine efforts to manipulate elections in Italy
and France. The CIA and the White House suceeded in halting official publi-
cation of the study, but a copy was leaked to the media and published in
supplements to the Village Voice on February 15 and 22, 1976. See p. 86 of
178
NOTES
the February 16 "Special Supplement: The CIA Report the President Doesn't
Want You to Read," for discussion of agency intervention in Italian elections.
Important original documentation can be found at the U.S. Psychological Strat-
egy Board files, Italy. Truman Library, Independence, MO.
28. lohn Prados, Presidents' Secret Wars (New York: Morrow, 1986), pp.
40-60. See also Blum, The CIA, and Ranelagh, The Agency.
29. Jay Peterzell, "How U.S. Propaganda Has Fooled Congress," First
Principles 8, no. 3 (1983) 1; Christopher Simpson, Blowback (New York:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987), pp. 125-37, 218-19.
30. Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties
Rebellion (New York: Grove Press, 1985); and Marks, The Search for the
"Manchurian Candidate."
31. Richard F. Staar (ed.), Public Diplomacy: USA versus USSR (Stanford,
CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1986); and Mikelson, America's Other Voice.
For Soviet commentary on this point, see A. Panfilov, Broadcasting Pirates:
Outline of External Radio Propaganda by the USA, Britain and FRG, translated
by Nicholas Bobrov (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981).
32. John Prados, The Soviet Estimate, U.S. Intelligence Analysis and Russian
Military Strength (New York: Dial, 1982), pp. 38-50; Peterzell, How U.S.
Propaganda Has Fooled Congress; Simpson, Blowback; Kurt Glaser, "Psy-
chological Warfare's Policy Feedback," Ukrainian Quarterly 9 (1953).
33. Clyde Kluckhohn, Alex Inkeles, and Raymond Bauer, Strategic Psy-
chological and Sociological Strengths and Vulnerabilities of the Soviet Social
System (Cambridge, MA: Russian Research Center, Harvard University, 1954),
U.S. Air Force contract no. 33(038)-12909; Alexander Dallin, Ralph Movro-
gordato, and Wilhelm Moll, Partisan Psychological Warfare and Popular At-
titudes under the German Occupation (Washington, DC: U.S. Air Force, 1954
[published under the auspices of the War Documentation Project, Columbia
University]). See also Tami Davis Biddle, "Handling the Soviet Threat: Ar-
guments for Preventative War and Compellence in the Early Cold War Period,"
Paper presented at the annual convention of the Society for Historians of Amer-
ican Foreign Relations, Washington, DC, 1988.
34. Walter Laqueur, A World of Secrets: The Uses and Limits of Intelligence
(New York: Basic Books, 1985); Carleton Mabee, "Margaret Mead and Be-
havioral Scientists in World War II: Problems of Responsibility, Truth and
Effectiveness," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 23 (January
1987):3-13; see also Winks, Cloak and Gown.
35. Lerner, Sykewar; Daniel Lerner (ed.), Propaganda in War and Crisis
(New York: George Stewart, 1951); Samuel Stouffer et al., The American
Soldier, Vol. I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp. 3-53; see
also the War Documentation Project studies cited in note 33 above.
36. Lerner, Sykewar; Kluckhohn, Inkeles, and Bauer, Strategic Psychological
and Sociological Strengths.
Notes
179
37. See, for example, Public Opinion Quarterly's special issue on interna-
tional communications research (Winter 1952-53).
38. Major casebook-type texts (in chronological order) include Bruce Lannes
Smith, Harold Lass well, and Ralph Casey, Propaganda, Communication and
Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Reference Guide (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1946); Paul Linebarger, Psychological Warfare (1948; rpt. Wash-
ington, DC: Combat Forces Press, 1956); Lerner, Propaganda; Wilbur
Schramm, FEC Psychological Warfare Operations (Baltimore: Operations Re-
search Office, John Hopkins Press, 1952); Daugherty and Janowitz, Psycho-
logical Warfare Casebook; Ithiel de Sola Pool (ed.), Social Science Research
and National Security (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution [Office of
Naval Research Project], 1963). For more modern compilations, U.S. Depart-
ment of the Army, The Art and Science of Psychological Operations: Case
Studies of Military Application, 2 vols., edited by Ronald McLaurin (Wash-
ington, DC: Department of the Army contract no. 525-7-1, April 1976); a three-
volume study edited by Harold Lasswell, Daniel Lerner, and Hans Speier,
Propaganda and Communication in World History (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1980); Carnes Lord and Frank Barnett (eds), Political Warfare
and Psychological Operations (Washington, DC: National Defense University
Press, 1989); Paul A. Smith, On Political War (Washington, DC: National
Defense University Press, 1989).
39. Harold Lasswell, Ralph Casey, and Bruce Lannes Smith, Propaganda
and Promotional Activities: An Annotated Bibliography (1935; rpt. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1969). This text goes well beyond strictly "media"
conceptions of propaganda to consider applications of violence, social man-
agement, and the role of intelligence agencies; see pp. 43-49, 196-203, 230-
34.
40. Bureau of Social Science Research, Chitra Smith, International Pro-
paganda and Psychological Warfare: An Annotated Bibliography, BSSR Ar-
chives, series II, box 7, project 819, University of Maryland Libraries Special
Collections, College Park. Of related interest is Vera Riley, An Annotated
Bibliography of Operations Research (Chevy Chase, MD: Operations Research
Office, Johns Hopkins University, 1953); and U.S. Department of State, Bureau
of Intelligence and Research, Office of External Research, Government Re-
sources Available for Foreign Affairs Research (Washington, DC: U.S. De-
partment of State, 1965).
41. Bruce Lannes Smith and Chitra Smith, International Communication and
Political Opinion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956).
42. Myron J. Smith, The Secret Wars: A Guide to Sources in English, 2
vols. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1980, 1981).
43. My search of the Sociofile data base for citations concerning "psycho-
logical warfare" yielded three recent citations, including one examining the
Chilean coup as a "prototype of counterrevolutionary psychological warfare 1 ';
180
NOTES
see Silvia Molina- Vedia, "El Caso Chileno Como un Prototipo de Guerra
Psicologica Contrarevolucionaria," Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Politicas y
Socioles (October-March 1976-77).
44. Neal Peterson, "Recent Intelligence Literature and the History of the
Cold War 1945-1960," paper presented at the annual conference of the Society
of Historians of American Foreign Relations, June 1988.
45. Ronald McLaurin, L. John Martin, and Sriramesh Krishnamurthy, "Re-
cent Developments in the Analysis of Audience Effects of Persuasive Com-
munications, A Selected, Annotated Bibliography," Abbott Associates,
Springfield, VA, July 1988 (Undersecretary of Defense for Policy contract no.
MDA-903-88-C-0048).
46. Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United States (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1987).
47. Albert Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford, Political Economics of Social
Research: The Case of Sociology (Springfield, VA: Clearinghouse for Federal
Scientific and Technological Information, 1968).
48. See, for example, Denis McQuail, Mass Communication Theory: An
Introduction (London and Beverly Hills: Sage, 1987), with no reference to
psychological warfare and passing references to propaganda; or John C. Merrill,
Global Journalism: A Survey of the World's Mass Media (White Plains, NY:
Longman, 1983), with no references to either psychological warfare or pro-
paganda. For a recent valuable exception to this trend, see Garth Jowett and
Victoria O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 2nd ed. (Newbury Park, CA:
Sage, 1992).
49. William Albig, "Two Decades of Opinion Study: 1936-1956," POQ
21, no. 1 (Spring 1957): 14-22. Unless otherwise noted, all unattributed articles
in this chapter appeared in POQ.
50. Allen Barton, "Paul Lazarsfeld and Applied Social Research," Social
Science History (October 1979): 4-44.
51. Tony Bennett, "Theories of the Media, Theories of Society," in Michael
Gurevitch and Tony Bennett (eds.), Culture, Society and the Media (London:
Methuen, 1982), pp. 30-55.
52. Bernard Berelson, "The Present State of Communication Research," 22,
no. 2 (Summer 1958): 178, and in more developed form, "The State of Com-
munication Research," 23, no. 1 (Spring 1959): 1-5.
53. Jay Blumler, "European-American Differences in Communication Re-
search," in Everett Rogers and Francis Balle (eds.), The Media Revolution in
America and in Western Europe (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1985), pp. 185-99.
54. Steven Chaffee (ed.), "The Contributions of Wilbur Schramm to Mass
Communication Research," Journalism Monographs No. 36 (October 1974).
55. Steven Chaffee and John Hochheimer, "The Beginnings of Political
Communications Research in the United States: Origins of the Limited Effects'
Notes
181
Model," in Michael Gurevitch and Mark Levy (eds.), (Mass Communications
Yearbook, vol. 5 (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1985).
56. Converse, Survey Research.
57. Daniel Czitrom, Media and the American Mind (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1982), pp. 122-46.
58. Jesse Delia, "Communication Research: A History," in Charles Berger
and Steven Chaffee (eds.), Handbook of Communication Science (Newbury
Park, CA: Sage, 1987), pp. 20-98.
59. Everette Dennis, "Whence We Came: Discovering the History of Mass
Communication Research," in Nancy Weatherly Sharp (ed.), Communication
Research: The Challenge of the Information Age (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press, 1988), pp. 3-20.
60. Heinz Eulau, "The Columbia Studies of Personal Influence," Social
Science History 2, no. 4 (May 1980): 207-28.
61. Todd Gitlin, "Media Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm," Theory and
Society 6, no. 2 (1978): 205-53.
62. Stuart Hall, "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology': Return of the Repressed
in Media Studies," in Gurevitch and Bennett Cultures, Society and the Media,
pp. 56-90.
63. Hanno Hardt, "Comparative Media Research: The World According to
America," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 5 (June 1988): 129-46.
64. Elihu Katz, "Communication Research Since Lazarsfeld," 51 (1987):
525-45.
65. Paul Lazarsfeld, "Historical Notes on the Empirical Study of Action:
An Intellectual Odyssey [1958]," in Qualitative Analysis: Historical and Crit-
ical Essays (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1972).
66. Shearon Lowery and Melvin DeFleur, Milestones in Mass Communication
Research (New York: Longman, 1983).
67. Jack McLeod and Jay Blumler, "The Macrosocial Level of Communi-
cation Science," in Charles Berger and Steven Chaffee (eds.), Handbook of
Communication Science (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987), pp. 271-322.
68. Everett Rogers, "Contributions and Criticisms of Diffusion Research,"
in Diffusion of Innovations, 3rd ed. (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1983).
69. Wilbur Schramm, "The Unique Perspective of Communication: A
Retrospective View," Journal of Communication 33, no. 3 (Summer 1983);
and Wilbur Schramm, "The Beginnings of Communication Study in the
United States," in Everett Rogers and Francis Balle (eds.), The Media Rev-
olution in America and in Western Europe (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1985),
pp. 200-211.
70. J. Michael Sproule, "Progressive Propaganda Critics and the Magic
Bullet Myth," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 6 (September 1989):
225-46.
182
NOTES
71. Stouffer et al., The American Soldier, Vol. 1, pp. 3-54, for an extended
discussion of Stouffer's highly influential Research Branch of the U.S. Army.
72. James Tankard, "Wilbur Schramm: Definer of a Field," Journalism
Educator A3, no. 3 (Autumn 1988): 11-16.
73. Ralph Beals, Politics of Social Research (Chicago: Aldine, 1969).
74. Biderman and Crawford, The Political Economics of Social Research;
Albert Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford, "The Basis of Allocation to Social
Scientific Work," paper presented to American Sociological Association, Sep-
tember 1969, now at BSSR Archives, series V, box 3, University of Maryland
Libraries Special Collections, College Park: Albert Biderman and Elisabeth
Crawford, "Paper Money: Trends of Research Sponsorship in American So-
ciology Journals," Social Sciences Information (Paris), (February 1970): 51-
77.
75. Elisabeth Crawford and Gene Lyons, "Foreign Area Research: A Back-
ground Statement," American Behavioral Scientist (June 1967). See also Elis-
abeth Crawford and Albert Biderman, Social Science and International Affairs
(New York: Wiley, 1969).
76. Irene Gendzier, Managing Political Change: Social Scientists and the
Third World (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985).
77. Irving Louis Horowitz (ed.), The Use and Abuse of Social Science (New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1971); Irving Louis Horowitz (ed.), The Rise and
Fall of Project Camelot (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974).
78. Irving Louis Horowitz and James Everett Katz, Social Science and Public
Policy in the United States (New York: Praeger, 1975).
79. Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress, The U.S. Ideological
Effort: Government Agencies and Programs, published as a committee print
by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 88th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington,
DC: GPO, January 1964).
80. Gene M. Lyons, The Uneasy Partnership: Social Science and the Federal
Government in the Twentieth Century (New York: Russell Sage Foundation,
1969). For a more recent analysis, see Richard Nathan, Social Science in
Government: Uses and Misuses, (New York: Basic Books, 1988).
81. James McCartney, "On Being Scientific: Changing Styles of Presentation
of Sociological Research," American Sociologist 5 (February 1970): 30-35.
82. Ithiel de Sola Pool, "The Necessity for Social Scientists Doing Research
for Governments," Background 10, no. 2 (August 1966): 111-22.
83. The most important social dynamic of theoretical development in social
sciences appears to be one of integration and acceptance of theories, rather
than "discovery" or simple articulation of new ideas. The distinction is im-
portant, in part because the former processes depend to a much greater extent
on recognition by established authorities in the field. The "stages" conception
tends to downplay the often politicized process involved in the acceptance of
Notes
183
theories in favor of assumptions about a normative process of scientific advance
on the basis of "truths." Several examples of the importance of acceptance
(rather than simple articulation) can be readily identified. Lowery and De Fleur
contend that Lazarsfeld's famous "1955" theory of the role of primary groups
in mass communication was in truth a rediscovery of earlier — but not yet fully
integrated — work by Rothlisberger and Dixon and by others. Lowery and De-
fleur, Milestones, pp. 180-82. Similarly, McLeod and Blumler point out that
"mass society" as a term and a theoretical category was never adopted by those
theorists who are most often tagged with that name. "Mass society" was in
fact a 1959 categorization of earlier theorists with substantially different per-
spectives, and one that was constructed at least in part for polemical purposes.
McLeod and Blumler, "The Macrosocial Level," p. 282. The category of
"mass society" theorists nevertheless remains in wide use in construction of
the "stages" of mass communication theory.
84. McLeod and Blumler, "The Macrosocial Level," p. 282.
85. Ibid.
86. Gitlin, "Media Sociology."
87. Czitrom. Media and the American Mind, pp. 131-39; Delia, "Com-
munication Research," pp. 54-73; McLeod and Blumler, "The Macrosocial
Level," p. 284.
88. John Dewey cited in James Carey, Communication as Culture (Boston:
Unwin Hyman, 1989), p. 22.
89. Ibid., pp. 13-68.
90. Hall, "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology,' " pp. 59-65.
91. Biderman and Crawford, Political Economics of Social Research, pp.
29-55.
92. Hall, "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology," pp. 59-62.
93. Biderman and Crawford, Political Economics of Social Research, pp.
32-38, 45-46; National Science Foundation, Federal Funds 1953, pp. 37-40.
94. Cited in Carey, Communication, p. 22.
95. Ibid., and, from a different perspective, Hall, "The Rediscovery of
'Ideology,' " pp. 59-62.
96. This total is derived from listings of Cantril's works in Who Was Who,
Vol. 5, p. 113, in National Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. 55, pp.
211-12, and the University of Maryland's GEAC computerized bibliographic
reference system. Texts that focus substantially on questions of psychological
warfare, propaganda, or mass media theory include The Psychology of Radio
(with Gorden Allport, 1935); The Invasion from Mars (1940); The Psychology
of Social Movements (1941); Gauging Public Opinion (contributing editor,
1944); Understanding Man's Social Behavior (1947); The "Why" of Man's
Experience (1950); Public Opinion, 1935-1946 (1951); How Nations See Each
Other: A Study in Public Opinion (with William Buchanan, 1953); The French
184
NOTES
Left (with David Rodnick, 1956); The Politics of Despair (1958); Soviet Leaders
and Mastery over Man (1960); Human Nature and Political Systems (1961);
The Pattern of Human Concerns (1965); The Human Dimension: Experiences
in Policy Research (1967); and The Political Beliefs of Americans (with Lloyd
Free, 1967).
97. ' 'Cantril, [Albert] Hadley," National Cyclopedia of American Biography,
Vol. 55, p. 212.
98. Hadley Cantril, The Human Dimension: Experiences in Policy Research
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967).
99. Obituaries on File (1979), Vol. 1, p. 93; Who Was Who, Vol. 5, p. 113;
National Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. 55, pp. 211-12.
100. Converse, Survey Research.
101. Ibid. See also Howland Sargeant, "Oral History Interview, December
15, 1970," Columbia University Library.
102. Free and Cantril The Political Beliefs of Americans. Lloyd Free also
was a joint author or credited by Cantril as a major contributor to a number of
Institute for International Social Research studies, including Attitudes, Hopes
and Fears of Nigerians (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964) and Six
Allies and a Neutral (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959), as well as Cantril's own
The French Left (1956), The Politics of Despair (1958), and Soviet Leaders
and Mastery over Man (1960).
103. The total of works reported here is derived from listings of Lasswell's
works in Current Biography (1947), pp. 75-77, Who's Who (1976-77), pp.
1833-34, and the University of Maryland's GEAC computerized bibliographic
reference system. Texts that focus substantially on questions of psychological
warfare, propaganda, or mass media theory include Propaganda Technique in
the World War (1927); Psychopathology and Politics (1930); Propaganda and
Promotional Activities: An Annotated Bibliography (with Bruce Lannes Smith
and Ralph Casey, 1935); Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936); Pro-
paganda, Communication and Public Opinion (with Bruce Lannes Smith and
Ralph Casey, 1946); Study of Power (1950); World Revolution in Our Time
(1951); National Security and Individual Freedom (1951); Comparative Studies
of Elites (1952); Comparative Studies of Symbols (with Ithiel de Sola Pool and
Daniel Lemer, 1952); The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and
Method (with Daniel Lerner, 1951); World Revolutionary Elites: Studies in
Coercive Ideological Movements (with Daniel Lerner, 1966); World Revolu-
tionary Propaganda (1970); Propaganda and Communication in World History,
3 vols, (edited, with Daniel Lemer and Hans Speier, 1980). Books that appeared
in multiple editions include Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927,
1938, 1971, 1972); Psychopathology and Politics (1930, 1934, 1960, 1969);
and Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936, 1950, 1958).
104. For example, "Politics: Who Gets What, When, and How" and "Mass
Notes
185
communication research is the study of who says what through what channel
to whom, with what effect" (a formulation Lasswell continued to favor at least
as late as 1980). Note also Lasswell's contribution to the classic functionalist
description of the "tasks," or functions, of the media noted in McQuail, Mass
Communication Theory, pp. 70, 191. For a concise summary of Lasswellian
media theory, see Propaganda and Communication in World History, Vol. I,
"Introduction."
105. McQuail, Mass Communication Theory, pp. 70, 191; Roger Wimmer
and Joseph Dominick, Mass Media Research (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1987),
pp. 6, 16; Current Biography (1947), pp. 375-77.
106. Lerner's work with Lasswell includes Comparative Studies of Symbols
(with Ithiel de Sola Pool, 1952); The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in
Scope and Method (1951); World Revolutionary Elites: Studies in Coercive
Ideological Movements (1966); and Propaganda and Communication in World
History, 3 vols, (edited, with Hans Speier, 1980).
107. This figure derived from listings in Contemporary Authors (New Re-
vision Series), Vol. 6, p. 292, and the University of Maryland's GEAC com-
puterized bibliographic reference system.
108. Contemporary Authors. Vol. 6, p. 292.
109. Ibid.
110. Examples include Sykewar: Psychological Warfare Against Germany
(1949, reissued 1971); Propaganda in War and Crisis (editor, 1951); Passing
of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (with Lucille Pevsner,
1958).
111. Tankard, "Wilbur Schramm," pp. 11-16; Chaffee, "Contributions of
Wilbur Schramm."
112. For the U.S. Air Force: John W. Riley and Wilbur Schramm, The Reds
Take a City: The Communist Occupation of Seoul (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1951); John Riley, Wilbur Schramm, and Frederick Williams,
"Flight from Communism: A Report on Korean Refugees," 15, no. 2 (Summer
1951): 274-86; and Wilbur Schramm and John Riley, "Communication in the
Sovietized State, as Demonstrated in Korea," American Sociological Review
16 (1951): 757-66. The POQ text (p. 274) acknowledges sponsorship by the
Human Resources Research Institute of the U.S. Air Force's Air University.
For the USIA: Wilbur Schramm, "The Soviet Concept of 'Psychological'
Warfare," in Hideya Kumata and Wilbur Schramm, Four Working Papers on
Propaganda Theory (Urbana, IL: Institute of Communication Research, 1955).
See cover statement for acknowledgment of USIA contract 1 A-W-362 as spon-
sor; Wilbur Schramm (chair), U.S. Information Agency: A Program of Research
and Evaluation for the International Information Administration (Washington,
DC: USIA, 1953); Wilbur Schramm (ed.), The Process and Effects of Mass
Communication (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1954); see Foreword for
186
NOTES
acknowledgment of USIA sponsorship of this text. The influence of this text
has been such that McLeod and Blumler, among others, date the emergence of
communication research "as an autonomous academic discipline" from the
publication of the 1954 Schramm text ("The Macrosocial Level," p. 284).
Wilbur Schramm, The Science of Human Communication (New York: Basic
Books, 1963) (Voice of America lecture series); see also Chaffee, "The Con-
tributions of Wilbur Schramm," p. 34.
For the Department of Defense: Schramm, FEC Psychological Operations;
see also Chaffee, "The Contributions of Wilbur Schramm," p. 31,
For Radio Free Europe: Robert Holt, Radio Free Europe (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1958), p. 236; Whelan, Radio Liberty, pp. 299-
301.
113. Bureau of Social Science Research (Kurt Back), Information Trans-
mission and Interpersonal Relations, Technical Report No. 1, U.S. Air Force
contract no. AF 18(600)1797; now in BSSR Archives, series II, project 322,
University of Maryland Libraries Special Collections, College Park.
114. Edward Barrett, Truth Is Our Weapon (New York: Funk & Wagnalls,
1953). Barrett was an OSS veteran, assistant secretary of state for U.S. foreign
propaganda programs, founder of the Columbia Journalism Review, and dean
of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism; see "Edward W. Barrett Dies;
Started Columbia Journalism Review," Washington Post, October 26, 1989.
115. Kluckhohn, Inkeles, and Bauer, Strategic Psychological and Sociolog-
ical Strengths, U.S. Air Force contract no. 33(038)42909. This text was even-
tually published with an expurgated title as Raymond Bauer, Alex Inkeles, and
Clyde Kluckhohn, How the Soviet System Works: Cultural, Psychological and
Social Themes (New York: Vintage, 1956), and has been widely used as a
college text.
116. Bureau of Social Science Research (Robert Bower), "Kazakhstan and
the Kazakhs: Targets and Vulnerabilities in Psychological Warfare," working
paper for Psychological Warfare Division, Human Resources Research Office,
December 1954, BSSR Archives, series II, box 5, project 649, University of
Maryland Libraries Special Collections, College Park.
117. Albert Biderman, "Social-Psychological Needs and 'Involuntary' Be-
havior as Illustrated by Compliance in Interrogation," Sociometry (June 1960):
120-47 (U.S. Air Force contract no. AF 18 [600] 1797). Biderman acknowl-
edges this study was also supported in part by the Society for the Investigation
of Human Ecology, which has been reported to have served as a conduit for
Central Intelligence Agency-funded psychological research; see Marks, The
Search for the "Manchurian Candidate," pp. 133n, 137, 139n, 147-67. On
Biderman, see also Bureau of Social Science Research (Albert Biderman et
al.), A Selected Bibliography on Captivity Behavior, BSSR Research Report
339-1 (U.S. Air Force contract no. AF 49[638]727), now at BSSR Archives,
Notes
187
series II, box 14, project 339, University of Maryland Libraries Special Col-
lections, College Park.
118. Bureau of Social Science Research (Stanley Bigman, project director),
"An Outline for the Study of National Communications Systems," prepared
for the Office of Research and Evaluation, USIA, November 1953, BSSR
Archives, series II, box 4, project no. 642, University of Maryland Special
Collections, College Park.
119. Leonard Cottrell served as 1952-53 chair of the Advisory Committee
on Psychological and Unconventional Warfare, U.S. Department of Defense
(see Daugherty and Janowitz, Psychological Warfare Casebook, p. xi). See
also lohn Riley and Leonard Cottrell, "Research for Psychological Warfare,"
27, no. I (Spring 1957): 147-58; and Leonard Cottrell, "Social Research and
Psychological Warfare," Sociometry 23, no. 2 (June 1960): 103-19.
120. Leo Crespi, "Some Social Science Research Activities in the USIA
(Unclassified Abstract)," in Special Operations Research Office, The U.S.
Army's Limited-War Mission and Social Science Research (symposium pro-
ceedings, March 1962), pp. 317-18; Crespi served as chief of the USIA survey
research division.
121. Daugherty and Janowtiz, Casebook. For a fuller biography of Daugh-
erty's extensive psychological warfare experience, see U.S. Department of the
Army, The Art and Science of Psychological Operations, p. xi.
122. Special Operations Research Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War
Mission, pp. xvi, 157ff. See also W. Phillips Davison, "Alliances," in Ithiel
deSola Pool (ed.), Social Science Research and National Security (Washington,
DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1963), pp. 26-44; Office of Naval Research con-
tract no. 1354(08). Davison was employed throughout the 1950s by the RAND
Corporation; see, for example, "Some Observations on the Role of Research
in Political Warfare" (RAND P-226); "Psychological Aspects of Foreign Pol-
icy" (with Hans Speier, P-615); "The Role of Mass Communications During
the Berlin Blockade" (P-665); "A Note on the Political Role of Mass Meetings
in a Mass Communications Society" (P-812): and "Power — The Idea and Its
Communication" (P-1869). Also: author's interview with W. Phillips Davison,
November 14, 1990.
123. Leonard Doob, "The Utilization of Social Scientists in the Overseas
Branch of the Office of War Information," American Political Science Review,
41, no. 4 (August 1947): 649-67; Leonard Doob, "The Strategies of Psycho-
logical Warfare," POQ 13, no. 4 (Winter 1949): 635-44.
124. Murray Dyer, The Weapon on the Wall: Rethinking Psychological War-
fare (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1959). Dyer was an employee of the
Operations Research Office at Johns Hopkins University.
125. Harry Eckstein, "The Internal War: Problem of Anticipation," in Ithiel
deSola Pool (ed.), Social Science Research and National Security (Washington,
188
NOTES
DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1963), pp. 102-47. Eckstein was a specialist in
counted nsurgency warfare employed by the Center for International Studies at
MIT.
126. Lloyd Free "General Premises for VOA," in U.S. Department of the
Army, The Art and Science of Psychological Operations, pp. 364-68. See p.
xiii for biographical details concerning Free's work.
127. George Gallup, "The Challenge of Ideological Warfare," in John
Boardman Whitton (ed.), Propaganda and the Cold War (Washington, DC:
Public Affairs Press, 1963), pp. 54-56.
128. Alexander George, Propaganda Analysis: A Study of the Inferences
Made from Nazi Propaganda in World War II (Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson,
1959).
129. Holt, Radio Free Europe; Holt and van de Velde, Strategic Psycho-
logical Operations; Robert Holt, "A New Approach to Political Communi-
cation," in John Boardman Whitton (ed.), Propaganda and the Cold War
(Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1963), pp. 41-53.
130. For Hovland's role in the oversight of military psychological warfare
contracting, see "Psychological News and Notes," American Psychologist 3,
no. 12 (December 1948): 559; for more detail on the Committee on Human
Resources, see Lyle Lanier, "The Psychological and Social Sciences in the
National Military Establishment," American Psychologist 4, no. 5 (May 1949):
127ff, 131-33.
131. Alex Inkeles, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Per-
suasion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950). See also Kluck-
hohn, Inkeles, and Bauer, Strategic Psychological and Sociological Strengths;
Daugherty and Janowitz, Psychological Warfare Casebook, p. xii.
132. Irving Janis, "Persuasion," in U.S. Department of the Army, The Art
and Science of Psychological Operations, pp. 609-24. See p. xvi for biograph-
ical details.
133. Daugherty and Janowitz, Psychological Warfare Casebook.
134. Joseph Klapper and Leo Lowenthal, "Contributions of Opinion Research
to Evaluation of Psychological Warfare," 15, no. 4 (Winter 1951-52): 651-
62. Klapper was an employee of the USIA Research and Evaluation staff under
Lowenthal.
135. Kluckhohn, Inkeles, and Bauer, Strategic Psychological and Sociolog-
ical Strengths. For discussion of the psychological warfare role of the Russian
Research Center that Kluckhohn directed, see Biddle, "Handling the Soviet
Threat."
136. Klaus Knorr, "The Intelligence Function," in Ithiel deSola Pool (ed.),
Social Science Research and National Security (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution, 1963), pp. 75-101, Knorr was a nuclear weapons specialist with
the Center for International Studies at MIT.
137. Kumata and Schramm, Four Working Papers on Propaganda Theory.
Notes
189
See cover statement for acknowledgment of USIA contract 1A-W-362 as spon-
sor. Kumata also served as an instructor at the Green Berets' Psychological
Warfare School at Fort Bragg, NC; see Daugherty and Janowitz, Psychological
Warfare Casebook, p. xiii.
138. On Lazarsfeld's role in USIA and Office of Naval Research Projects
projects, see Converse, Survey Research, p. 290; Bruce Lannes Smith,' 'Trends
in Research in International Communication and Opinion," 20, no. 1 (Spring
1956): 191; Bureau of Social Science Research (Stanley Bigman), "An Outline
for the Study of National Communications Systems"; Robert Merton and Paul
Lazarsfeld, "Studies in Radio and Film Propaganda," in Robert Merton (ed.),
Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1957), pp. 509-
28; Paul Lazarsfeld, "An Episode in the History of Social Research: A
Memoir," in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, The Intellectual Migration:
Europe and America 1930-1960 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1969), pp. 270ff; Paul Lazarsfeld, "The Policy Science Movement (An Out-
siders View)," Policy Sciences 6 (September 1975): 211-22; Paul Lazarsfeld
Oral History, Columbia University Library, recorded November 1961-August
1962. See also Inkeles, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia, p. xiii.
139. Alexander Leighton, Human Relations in a Changing World (New York:
Dutton, 1949).
140. Nathan Leites, "The Third International on Its Change of Policy" and
Nathan Leites and Ithiel de Sola Pool, "The Response of Communist Propa-
ganda to Frustration," both in Harold Lasswell and Nathan Leites, The Lan-
guage of Politics (New York: George Stewart, 1949). Nathan Leites and Ernst
Kris, "Trends in Twentieth Century Propaganda," in Lerner, Propaganda in
War, pp. 39-54; and Nathan Leites, A Study of Bolshevism (Glencoe, IL: Free
Press, 1953). Leites was on the social science staff of the RAND Corporation.
141. Paul Linebarger, Psychological Warfare, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC:
Combat Forces Press, 1954); Paul Linebarger, "Warfare Psychologically
Waged" in Lerner, Propaganda in War, pp. 267-73; Special Operations Re-
search Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War Mission, pp. xvi, 79. Linebarger
became professor of Asiatic studies at the School of Advanced International
Studies, Princeton; see Lerner, Propaganda in War, p. viii. See Joseph B.
Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (New York: Ballentine, 1976), pp. 74-103,
concerning Linebarger's psychological warfare training projects for CIA agents.
142. Leo Lowenthal (guest editor), "Special Issue on International Com-
munications Research," 16, no. 4 (Winter 1952-53); Joseph Klapper and Leo
Lowenthal, "Contributions of Opinion Research to Evaluation of Psychological
Warfare," 15, no. 4 (Winter 1951-52): 651-62. For Lowenthal's own version,
see Leo Lowenthal, An Unmastered Past: Autobiographical Reflections of Leo
Lowenthal, edited by Martin Jay (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987), pp. 81-110.
143. L. John Martin, International Propaganda (Minneapolis: University of
190
NOTES
Minnesota Press, 1969); L. John Martin (ed.), "Propaganda in International
Affairs," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
(special issue) 398 (1971); L. John Martin, Ronald D. McLaurin, and Sriramesh
Krishnamurthy, Psychological Operations Program Evaluation, and Ronald D.
McLaurin, L. John Martin, Sriramesh Krishnamurthy, et al., Recent Devel-
opments in the Analysis of Audience Effects of Persuasive Communications: A
Selected Annotated Bibliography, both prepared for the Undersecretary of De-
fense (Policy), contract no. MDA-903-88-C-0048, 1988. See also Martin's
contributions to Lasswell, Lerner, and Speier, Propaganda, Vol. 3 pp. 249-
94. Martin served in a number of posts at USIA, including coordinator of
overseas research and chief of the Program Analysis Division; see U.S. De-
partment of the Army, The Art and Science of Psychological Operations, p.
xix, for biographical data.
144. Mabee, "Margaret Mead," pp. 3-13.
145. Special Operations Research Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War
Mission, p. xvi.
146. Saul Padover and Harold Lasswell, Psychological Warfare and the
Strategy of Soviet Propaganda (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1951);
Saul K. Padover, "Psychological Warfare in an Age of World Revolution,"
Columbia Journal of International Affairs 5 (1951): 3-12. Padover served as
an Office of Strategic Services officer assigned to psychological warfare duty
in Europe during World War II and subsequently became a professor and dean
of the School of Politics at the New School for Social Research in New York:
see Daugherty and Janowitz, Psychological Warfare Casebook, p. xiii.
147. Nathan Lietes and Ithiel de Sola Pool, "The Response of Communist
Propaganda to Frustration," in Harold Lasswell and Nathan Leites (eds.), Lan-
guage of Politics (New York: George Stewart, 1949), p. 334; Special Operations
Research Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War Mission, pp. xvi, 199ff; Ithiel
de Sola Pool, "Social Science in the Nuclear Age," in Ithiel de Sola Pool
(ed.), Social Science Research and National Security; pp. 1-25; Ithiel de Sola
Pool, "The Changing Soviet Union," in U.S. Department of the Army, The
Art and Science of Psychological Operations, pp. 1043-50, (see p. xxi for
biographic data); and Ithiel de Sola Pool, ' 'The Necessity for Social Scientists."
148. Mikelson, America's Other Voice, pp. 24,41, 60, 259; see also "Poole,
Dewitt Clinton," Current Biography 1950, pp. 461-63.
149. Lucian Pye, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1956). Pye was a professor at the Center for International
Studies at MIT, a frequent consultant to government agencies concerning psy-
chological warfare aimed at Asians, and the beneficiary of a number of gov-
ernment contracts designed to gather intelligence concerning the appeal of
communism to Asians in Malaya, Burma, and Southeast Asia; on these points
see Pye's biography in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute,
Problems of Development and Internal Defense. Report of a Country Team
Notes
191
Seminar, June 11-July 13, 1962 (Washington, DC: 1962) Foreign Service
Institute.
150. Riley and Schramm, Reds; John Riley, Wilbur Schramm, and Frederick
Williams, "Flight from Communism: A Report on Korean Refugees," POQ
(Summer 1951): 274; Schramm and Riley, "Communication in the Sovietized
State"; Riley and Cottrell, "Research for Psychological Warfare." Riley also
served as vice chair of the secretary of defense's advisory panel on special
operations; see Who's Who (1974-75), p. 2589.
151. Director of research, Human Resources Research Institute of the U.S.
Air Force Air University (1952-53); consultant and contractor to military ser-
vices (1954-59); chief of psychology and social science division of the Office
of Director of Defense Research and Engineering of the Department of Defense
(1961-64); other posts; see Who's Who (1974-75), p. 2792. See also Carroll
Shartle, "Selected Department of Defense Programs in Social Science," in
Special Operations Research Office, The U.S. Army's Limited-War Mission,
pp. xvi, 322ff.
152. Bureau of Social Science Research, Chitra M. Smith, International
Propaganda and Psychological Warfare.
153. Hans Speier and Ernst Kris, German Radio Propaganda (London: Ox-
ford University Press, 1944); Hans Speier, "The Future of Psychological War-
fare," 12, no. 1 12 (1948): 5-18; Hans Speier, "Morale and Propaganda,"
"War Aims in Political Warfare," and "Psychological Warfare Reconsidered"
in Lerner, Propaganda in War pp. 3-25, 69-89, 463-91; Hans Speier, Psy-
chological Aspects of Global Conflict (Industrial College of the Armed Forces,
1955); Lasswell, Lerner, and Speier, Propaganda and Communication. Speier's
RAND Corporation studies pertaining to psychological aspects of international
conflict include "Psychological Warfare Reconsidered" (1951, P-196); "In-
ternational Political Communication: Elite vs. Mass" (1951, P-270); and "Psy-
chological Aspects of Foreign Policy" (with W. Phillips Davison, 1954, P-
615). Speier was a founder and eventually director of the U .S. Foreign Broadcast
Information Service during World War II, then a senior officer of the Overseas
Branch of the Office of War Information: he served as director of social science
at the RAND Corporation from 1948 to 1960 and as a member of its research
council from 1960 to 1969; see Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series,
Vol. 9, pp. 463-64; Vol. 2, p. 530.
154. Stouffer et al., The American Soldier; Stouffer, "A Technique for
Improving Cumulative Scales," Samuel Stouffer, "1665 and 1954," 18, no.
3 (Fall 1954): 233-38.
155. Ralph K. White, "The New Resistance to International Propaganda,"
16, no. 4 (Winter 1952) 539-50. White later served with the USIA Special
Projects Division; see Special Operations Research Office, The U.S. Army's
Limited-War Mission, p. 338.
156. U.S. Army Operations Research Office psychological warfare research
192
NOTES
team in Korea (1951-52); William R. Young, "GULAG Slavery Inc.: The Use
of an Illustrated Map in Printed Propaganda," in Daugherty and Janowitz,
Psychological Warfare Casebook, pp. xiv, 597-602.
157. Converse, Survey Research, pp. 162 — 415 passim.
158. RAND Corporation, RAND: 25th Anniversary Volume (Santa Monica,
CA: RAND Corp., n.d. [1974?]); Bruce L. R. Smith, The RAND Corporation
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966); RAND Corporation, Index
of Selected Publications of The RAND Corporation, Vol. 1 (Santa Monica, CA:
author, 1962); and RAND's quarterly periodical, Selected Abstracts.
159. Barton, "Paul Lazarsfeld"; Eulau, "The Columbia Studies"; Merton
and Lazarsfeld, "Studies in Radio and Film Propaganda"; Judith Barton (ed.),
Guide to the Bureau of Applied Social Research (New York: Clearwater, 1984).
160. Charles Fritz and Eli Marks, "The NORC Studies of Human Behavior
in Disaster," Journal of Social Issues 10, no. 3 (1954): 26-41. Charles Mack,
National Opinion Research Center Bibliography of Publications 1941-1960 and
Supplement 1961-1971 (Chicago: NORC, 1961 and 1972, respectively); Paul
Sheatsley, "NORC; The First Forty Years" (Chicago: National Opinion Re-
search Center, 1987); NORC Report 1985-1986 (Chicago: National Opinion
Research Center, 1987).
161. Charles Cannell and Robert Kahn, "Some Factors in the Origins and
Development of the Institute for Social Research, the University of Michigan,"
Institute for Social Research Working Papers Series No. 8034, January 1984.
162. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies,
The Center for International Studies: A Description (Cambridge: MIT, July
1955). See also Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International
Studies, "A Plan of Research for International Communication: A Report,"
World Politics 6, no. 3 (April 1954): 358-77.
163. Biddle, "Handling the Soviet Threat"; Charles O'Connell, "Social
Structure and Science: Soviet Studies at Harvard," Ph.D. diss., University of
California at Los Angeles, 1990; Harvard University, Russian Research Center,
The Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System: Survey of Research Objectives
(Cambridge, MA: Russian Research Project, 1951); Russian Research Center,
Five Year Report and Current Projects and Ten Year Report and Current
Projects 1948-1958 (Cambridge, MA: Russian Research Center, 1953 and
1958, respectively).
164. University of Maryland, College Park Libraries, Historical Manuscripts
and Archives Department, Guide to the Archives of the Bureau of Social Science
Research (College Park: University of Maryland, n.d. [1987?]).
165. Mikelson, America's Other Voice; Holt, Radio Free Europe.
166. Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare, offers perhaps the best available
reconstruction of the evolution of U.S. psychological warfare, special warfare,
and covert operations capabilities. See also Aaron Bank, From OSS to Green
Notes
193
Berets: The Birth of the Special Forces (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1986);
Charles Simpson, Inside the Green Berets: The First Thirty Years (Novato,
CA; Presidio Press, 1983). For an excellent recent text that includes considerable
historical material, see Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft (New
York: Pantheon, 1992). Of related interest, see Edward Herman and Gerry
O'Sullivan, The '"Terrorism" Industry: The Experts and Institutions that Shape
Our View of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 1989).
167. "Testimony of Ladislav Bittman, former Deputy Chief of the Disin-
formation Department of the Czechoslovak Intelligence Service" and Central
Intelligence Agency, "Soviet Covert Action and Propaganda," both in House
Subcommittee on Oversight of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,
Hearings: Soviet Covert Action, 96th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, DC: GPO,
1980).
168. For a useful summary of developments concerning access to East bloc
archives, see Cold War International History Project Bulletin, No. 1 (Wash-
ington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Spring 1992).
169. Selected examples include Leites and Pool, "Response of Communist
Propaganda"; Lendvai, Bureaucracy of Truth; Roger Beaumont, "Soviet Psy-
chological Warfare and Propaganda," Signal 42, no. 3 (1987):75-84.
170. Harold Lasswell, "The Strategy of Soviet Propaganda," Headline Series
Pamphlet 86 (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1951); Brutus Coste,
' 'Propaganda in Eastern Europe," 14 (Winter 1950):639-66; Evron Kirkpatrick,
Target — The World: Communist Propaganda Activities in 1955 (New York:
Macmillan, 1956); John C. Clews, Communist Propaganda Techniques (New
York: Praeger, 1964); or Lawrence Eagleburger, "Unacceptable Intervention:
Soviet Active Measures," NATO Review (April 1983).
171. Cyril Barclay, The New Warfare (London: Clowes, 1953); Peter Watson,
The War on the Mind: The Military Uses and Abuses of Psychology (New York:
Penguin, 1980); and McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft.
172. Michael McClintock, "Emulating the Europeans: American Counter-
insurgency and Unconventional Warfare" (unpublished paper, written in May
1990, in author's possession); Jacques Ellul, Propaganda (New York: Knopf,
1971); Bennett Clark, "The BBC's External Services," International Affairs
(London) 35 (April 1959): 170-80; or Carey McWilliams, "Knights in Shining
Buicks," Nation 172 (January 6, 1951).